L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
do so an action will not in all cases lie against us, for we are excused
for making default if forced to do so by a power which we cannot resist.
XL. You may take the same answer to the question as to whether we ought
in all cases to show gratitude for kindness, and whether a benefit ought
in all cases to be repaid. It is my duty to show a grateful mind, but
in some cases my own poverty, in others the prosperity of the friend
to whom I owe some return, will not permit me to give it. What, for
instance, am I, a poor man, to give to a king or a rich man in return
for his kindness, especially as some men regard it as a wrong to have
their benefits repaid, and are wont to pile one benefit upon another? In
dealing with such persons, what more can I do than wish to repay them?
Yet I ought not to refuse to receive a new benefit, because I have not
repaid the former one. I shall take it as freely as it is given, and
will offer myself to my friend as a wide field for the exercise of
his good nature: he who is unwilling to receive new benefits must be
dissatisfied with what he has already received. Do you say, "I shall
not be able to return them?" What is that to the purpose? I am willing
enough to do so if opportunity or means were given me. He gave it to me,
of course, having both opportunity and means: is he a good man or a bad
one? if he is a good man, I have a good case against him, and I will
not plead if he be a bad one. Neither do I think it right to insist on
making repayment, even though it be against the will of those whom we
repay, and to press it upon them however reluctant they may be; it is
not repayment to force an unwilling man to resume what you were once
willing to take. Some people, if any trifling present be sent to them,
afterwards send back something else for no particular reason, and then
declare that they are under no obligation; to send something back at
once, and balance one present by another, is the next thing to refusing
to receive it. On some occasions I shall not return a benefit, even
though I be able to do so. When? When by so doing I shall myself lose
more than he will gain, or if he would not notice any advantage to
himself in receiving that which it would be a great loss to me to
return. The man who is always eager to repay under all circumstances,
has not the feeling of a grateful man, but of a debtor; and, to put
it shortly, he who is too eager to repay, is unwilling to be in his
friend's debt; he who is unwilling, and yet is in his friend's debt, is
ungrateful.
BOOK V.
I.
In the preceding books I seem to have accomplished the object which I
proposed to myself, since in them I have discussed how a benefit ought
to be bestowed, and how it ought to be received. These are the limits of
this action; when I dwell upon it further I am not obeying the orders,
but the caprices of my subject which ought to be followed whither it
leads, not whither it allures us to wander; for now and then something
will arise, which, although it is all but unconnected with the subject,
instead of being a necessary part of it, still thrills the mind with a
certain charm. However, since you wish it to be so, let us go on, after
having completed our discussion of the heads of the subject itself,
to investigate those matters which, if you wish for truth, I must
call adjacent to it, not actually connected with it; to examine which
carefully is not one worth one's while, and yet is not labour in vain.
No praise, however, which I can give to benefits does justice to
you, Aebutius Liberalis, a man of excellent disposition and naturally
inclined to bestow them. Never have I seen any one esteem even the most
trifling services more kindly; indeed, your good-nature goes so far
as to regard whatever benefit is bestowed upon anyone as bestowed upon
yourself; you are prepared to pay even what is owed by the ungrateful,
that no one may regret having bestowed benefits. You yourself are so far
from any boastfulness, you are so eager at once to free those whom you
serve from any feeling of obligation to you, that you like, when giving
anything to any one, to seem not so much to be giving a present as
returning one; and therefore what you give in this manner will all the
more fully he repaid to you: for, as a rule, benefits come to one who
does not demand repayment of them; and just as glory follows those who
avoid it, so men receive a more plentiful harvest in return for benefits
bestowed upon those who had it in their power to be ungrateful. With you
there is no reason why those who have received benefits from you should
not ask for fresh ones; nor would you refuse to bestow others, to
overlook and conceal what you have given, and to add to it more and
greater gifts, since it is the aim of all the best men and the noblest
dispositions to bear with an ungrateful man until you make him grateful.
Be not deceived in pursuing this plan; vice, if you do not too soon
begin to hate it, will yield to virtue.
II. Thus it is that you are especially pleased with what you think the
grandly-sounding phrase, "It is disgraceful to be worsted in a contest
of benefits." Whether this be true or not deserves to be investigated,
and it means something quite different from what you imagine; for it is
never disgraceful to be worsted in any honourable contest, provided that
you do not throw down your arms, and that even when conquered you
wish to conquer. All men do not strive for a good object with the same
strength, resources, and good fortune, upon which depend at all events
the issues of the most admirable projects, though we ought to praise the
will itself which makes an effort in the right direction. Even though
another passes it by with swifter pace, yet the palm of victory does
not, as in publicly-exhibited races, declare which is the better man;
though even in the games chance frequently brings an inferior man to the
front. As far as loyalty of feeling goes, which each man wishes to be
possessed in the fullest measure on his own side, if one of the two be
the more powerful, if he have at his disposal all the resources which he
wishes to use, and be favoured by fortune in his most ambitious efforts,
while the other, although equally willing, can only return less than he
receives, or perhaps can make no return at all, but still wishes to do
so and is entirely devoted to this object; then the latter is no more
conquered than he who dies in arms, whom the enemy found it easier to
slay than to turn back. To be conquered, which you consider disgraceful,
cannot happen to a good man; for he will never surrender, never give up
the contest, to the last day of his life he will stand prepared and in
that posture he will die, testifying that though he has received much,
yet that he had the will to repay as much as he had received.
III. The Lacedaemonians forbid their young men to contend in the
pancratium, or with the caestus, in which games the defeated party has
to acknowledge himself beaten. The winner of a race is he who first
reaches the goal; he outstrips the others in swiftness, but not in
courage. The wrestler who has been thrown three times loses the palm of
victory, but does not yield it up. Since the Lacedaemonians thought it
of great importance that their countrymen should be invincible, they
kept them away from those contests in which victory is assigned, not by
the judge, or by the issue of the contest itself, but by the voice
of the vanquished begging the victor to spare him as he falls. This
attribute of never being conquered, which they so jealously guard among
their citizens, can be attained by all men through virtue and goodwill,
because even when all else is vanquished, the mind remains unconquered.
For this cause no one speaks of the three hundred Fabii as conquered,
but slaughtered. Regulus was taken captive by the Carthaginians, not
conquered; and so were all other men who have not yielded in spirit when
overwhelmed by the strength and weight of angry fortune.
So is it with benefits. A man may have received more than he gave, more
valuable ones, more frequently bestowed; yet is he not vanquished. It
may be that, if you compare the benefits with one another, those which
he has received will outweigh those which he has bestowed; but if you
compare the giver and the receiver, whose intentions also ought to be
considered apart, neither will prove the victor. It often happens that
even when one combatant is pierced with many wounds, while the other is
only slightly injured, yet they are said to have fought a drawn battle,
although the former may appear to be the worse man.
IV. No one, therefore, can be conquered in a contest of benefits, if he
knows how to owe a debt, if he wishes to make a return for what he
has received, and raises himself to the same level with his friend in
spirit, though he cannot do so in material gifts. As long as he remains
in this temper of mind, as long as he has the wish to declare by proofs
that he has a grateful mind, what difference does it make upon which
side we can count the greater number of presents? You are able to give
much; I can do nothing but receive. Fortune abides with you, goodwill
alone with me; yet I am as much on an equality with you as naked or
lightly armed men are with a large body armed to the teeth. No one,
therefore, is worsted by benefits, because each man's gratitude is to be
measured by his will. If it be disgraceful to be worsted in a contest
of benefits, you ought not to receive a benefit from very powerful men
whose kindness you cannot return, I mean such as princes and kings, whom
fortune has placed in such a station that they can give away much, and
can only receive very little and quite inadequate returns for what they
give. I have spoken of kings and princes, who alone can cause works to
be accomplished, and whose superlative power depends upon the obedience
and services of inferiors; but some there are, free from all earthly
lusts, who are scarcely affected by any human objects of desire, upon
whom fortune herself could bestow nothing. I must be worsted in a
contest of benefits with Socrates, or with Diogenes, who walked naked
through the treasures of Macedonia, treading the king's wealth under his
feet. In good sooth, he must then rightly have seemed, both to himself
and to all others whose eyes were keen enough to perceive the real
truth, to be superior even to him at whose feet all the world lay.
He was far more powerful, far richer even than Alexander, who then
possessed everything; for there was more that Diogenes could refuse to
receive than that Alexander was able to give.
V. It is not disgraceful to be worsted by these men, for I am not the
less brave because you pit me against an invulnerable enemy, nor does
fire not burn because you throw into it something over which flames have
no power, nor does iron lose its power of cutting, though you may wish
to cut up a stone which is hard, impervious to blows, and of such a
nature that hard tools are blunted upon it. I give you the same answer
about gratitude. A man is not disgracefully worsted in a contest of
benefits if he lays himself under an obligation to such persons
as these, whose enormous wealth or admirable virtue shut out all
possibility of their benefits being returned. As a rule we are worsted
by our parents; for while we have them with us, we regard them as
severe, and do not understand what they do for us. When our age begins
to bring us a little sense, and we gradually perceive that they deserve
our love for those very things which used to prevent our loving them,
their advice, their punishments, and the careful watch which they used
to keep over our youthful recklessness, they are taken from us. Few live