L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
that they save others, though they straiten our means, if they alleviate
the poverty and distresses of others. What difference does it make to me
whether I receive benefits or not? even if I receive them, it is still
my duty to bestow them. A benefit has in view the advantage of him
upon whom we bestow it, not our own; otherwise we merely bestow it upon
ourselves. Many things, therefore, which are of the greatest possible
use to others lose all claim to gratitude by being paid for. Merchants
are of use to cities, physicians to invalids, dealers to slaves; yet all
these have no claim to the gratitude of those whom they benefit, because
they seek their own advantage through that of others. That which is
bestowed with a view to profit is not a benefit. "I will give this in
order that I may get a return for it" is the language of a broker.
XIV. I should not call a woman modest, if she rebuffed her lover in
order to increase his passion, or because she feared the law or her
husband; as Ovid says:
"She that denies, because she does not dare
To yield, in spirit grants her lover's prayer."
Indeed, the woman who owes her chastity, not to her own virtue, but to
fear, may rightly be classed as a sinner. In the same manner, he who
merely gave in order that he might receive, cannot be said to have
given. Pray, do we bestow benefits upon animals when we feed them for
our use or for our table? do we bestow benefits upon trees when we tend
them that they may not suffer from drought or from hardness of ground?
No one is moved by righteousness and goodness of heart to cultivate an
estate, or to do any act in which the reward is something apart from the
act itself; but he is moved to bestow benefits, not by low and grasping
motives, but by a kind and generous mind, which even after it has given
is willing to give again, to renew its former bounties by fresh ones,
which thinks only of how much good it can do the man to whom it gives;
whereas to do any one a service because it is our interest to do so is a
mean action, which deserves no praise, no credit. What grandeur is there
in loving oneself, sparing oneself, gaining profit for oneself? The true
love of giving calls us away from all this, forcibly leads us to put up
with loss, and foregoes its own interest, deriving its greatest pleasure
from the mere act of doing good.
XV. Can we doubt that the converse of a benefit is an injury? As the
infliction of injuries is a thing to be avoided, so is the bestowal of
benefits to be desired for its own sake. In the former, the disgrace of
crime outweighs all the advantages which incite us to commit it; while
we are urged to the latter course by the appearance of honour, in itself
a powerful incentive to action, which attends it.
I should not lie if I were to affirm that every one takes pleasure in
the benefits which he has bestowed, that everyone loves best to see the
man whom he has most largely benefited. Who does not thinks that to have
bestowed one benefit is a reason for bestowing a second? and would this
be so, if the act of giving did not itself give us pleasure? How often
you may hear a man say, "I cannot bear to desert one whose life I have
preserved, whom I have saved from danger. True, he asks me to plead his
cause against men of great influence. I do not wish to do so, yet what
am I to do? I have already helped him once, nay twice." Do you not
perceive how very powerful this instinct must be, if it leads us to
bestow benefits first because it is right to do so, and afterwards
because we have already bestowed somewhat? Though at the outset a man
may have had no claim upon us, we yet continue to give to him because we
have already given to him. So untrue is it that we are urged to bestow
benefits by our own interest, that even when our benefits prove failures
we continue to nurse them and encourage them out of sheer love of
benefiting, which has a natural weakness even for what has been
ill-bestowed, like that which we feel for our vicious children.
XVI. These same adversaries of ours admit that they are grateful, yet
not because it is honourable, but because it is profitable to be so.
This can be proved to be untrue all the more easily, because it can be
established by the same arguments by which we have established that to
bestow a benefit is desirable for its own sake. All our arguments start
from this settled point, that honour is pursued for no reason except
because it is honour. Now, who will venture to raise the question
whether it be honourable to be grateful? who does not loathe the
ungrateful man, useless as he is even to himself? How do you feel when
any one is spoken of as being ungrateful for great benefits conferred
upon him by a friend? Is it as though he had done something base, or had
merely neglected to do something useful and likely to be profitable to
himself? I imagine that you think him a bad man, and one who deserves
punishment, not one who needs a guardian; and this would not be the
case, unless gratitude were desirable in itself and honourable. Other
qualities, it may be, manifest their importance less clearly, and
require an explanation to prove whether they be honourable or no; this
is openly proved to be so in the sight of all, and is too beautiful for
anything to obscure or dim its glory. What is more praiseworthy, upon
what are all men more universally agreed, than to return gratitude for
good offices?
XVII. Pray tell me, what is it that urges us to do so? Is it profit?
Why, unless a man despises profit, he is not grateful. Is it ambition?
why, what is there to boast of in having paid what you owe? Is it
fear? The ungrateful man feels none, for against this one crime we
have provided no law, as though nature had taken sufficient precautions
against it. Just as there is no law which bids parents love and indulge
their children, seeing that it is superfluous to force us into the
path which we naturally take, just as no one needs to be urged to love
himself, since self-love begins to act upon him as soon as he is born,
so there is no law bidding us to seek that which is honourable
in itself; for such things please us by their very nature, and so
attractive is virtue that the disposition even of bad men leads them to
approve of good rather than of evil. Who is there who does not wish
to appear beneficent, who does not even when steeped in crime and
wrong-doing strive after the appearance of goodness, does not put some
show of justice upon even his most intemperate acts, and endeavour to
seem to have conferred a benefit even upon those whom he has injured?
Consequently, men allow themselves to be thanked by those whom they have
ruined, and pretend to be good and generous, because they cannot prove
themselves so; and this they never would do were it not that a love
of honour for its own sake forces them to seek a reputation quite at
variance with their real character, and to conceal their baseness, a
quality whose fruits we covet, though we regard it itself with dislike
and shame. No one has ever so far rebelled against the laws of nature
and put off human feeling as to act basely for mere amusement. Ask any
of those who live by robbery whether he would not rather obtain what
he steals and plunders by honest means; the man whose trade is highway
robbery and the murder of travellers would rather find his booty than
take it by force; you will find no one who would not prefer to enjoy the
fruits of wickedness without acting wickedly. Nature bestows upon us all
this immense advantage, that the light of virtue shines into the minds
of all alike; even those who do not follow her, behold her.
XVIII. A proof that gratitude is desirable for itself lies in the fact
that ingratitude is to be avoided for itself, because no vice more
powerfully rends asunder and destroys the union of the human race.
To what do we trust for safety, if not in mutual good offices one to
another? It is by the interchange of benefits alone that we gain some
measure of protection for our lives, and of safety against sudden
disasters. Taken singly, what should we be? a prey and quarry for wild
beasts, a luscious and easy banquet; for while all other animals have
sufficient strength to protect themselves, and those which are born to a
wandering solitary life are armed, man is covered by a soft skin, has no
powerful teeth or claws with which to terrify other creatures, but weak
and naked by himself is made strong by union.
God has bestowed upon him two gifts, reason and union, which raise him
from weakness to the highest power; and so he, who if taken alone would
be inferior to every other creature, possesses supreme dominion. Union
has given him sovereignty over all animals; union has enabled a being
born upon the earth to assume power over a foreign element, and bids him
be lord of the sea also; it is union which has checked the inroads of
disease, provided supports for our old age, and given us relief from
pain; it is union which makes us strong, and to which we look for
protection against the caprices of fortune. Take away union, and you
will rend asunder the association by which the human race preserves
its existence; yet you will take it away if you succeed in proving that
ingratitude is not to be avoided for itself, but because something is
to be feared for it; for how many are there who can with safety be
ungrateful? In fine, I call every man ungrateful who is merely made
grateful by fear.
XIX. No sane man fears the gods; for it is madness to fear what is
beneficial, and no man loves those whom he fears. You, Epicurus, ended
by making God unarmed; you stripped him of all weapons, of all power,
and, lest anyone should fear him, you banished him out of the world.
There is no reason why you should fear this being, cut off as he is, and
separated from the sight and touch of mortals by a vast and impassable
wall; he has no power either of rewarding or of injuring us; he dwells
alone half-way between our heaven and that of another world, without the
society either of animals, of men, or of matter, avoiding the crash of
worlds as they fall in ruins above and around him, but neither hearing
our prayers nor interested in us. Yet you wish to seem to worship this
being just as a father, with a mind, I suppose, full of gratitude; or,
if you do not wish to seem grateful, why should you worship him, since
you have received no benefit from him, but have been put together
entirely at random and by chance by those atoms and mites of yours?
"I worship him," you answer, "because of his glorious majesty and his
unique nature." Granting that you do this, you clearly do it without
the attraction of any reward, or any hope; there is therefore something
which is desirable for itself, whose own worth attracts you, that
is, honour. Now what is more honourable than gratitude? the means of
practising this virtue are as extensive as life itself.
XX. "Yet," argues he, "there is also a certain amount of profit inherent
in this virtue." In what virtue is there not? But that which we speak
of as desirable for itself is such, that although it may possess some
attendant advantages, yet it would be desirable even if stripped of
all these. It is profitable to be grateful; yet I will be grateful even
though it harm me. What is the aim of the grateful man? is it that his
gratitude may win for him more friends and more benefits? What then? If
a man is likely to meet with affronts by showing his gratitude, if he
knows that far from gaining anything by it, he must lose much even of
what he has already acquired, will he not cheerfully act to his own
disadvantage? That man is ungrateful who, in returning a kindness,
looks forward to a second gift--who hopes while he repays. I call him