L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
shall charge it to you; if I save your son's life, will you not thereby
receive a benefit from me?
XIX. THE ADVERSARY. Your instances are not to the purpose, for he who
cultivates my land, does not benefit the land, but me; he who props my
house so that it does not fall, does this service to me, for the house
itself is without feeling, and as it has none, it is I who am indebted
to him; and he who cultivates my land does so because he wishes to
oblige me, not to oblige the land. I should say the same of a slave; he
is a chattel owned by me; he is saved for my advantage, therefore I am
indebted for him. My son is himself capable of receiving a benefit; so
it is he who receives it; I am gratified at a benefit which comes so
near to myself, but am not laid under any obligation.
SE. Still I should like you, who say that you are under no obligation,
to answer me this. The good health, the happiness, and the inheritance
of a son are connected with his father; his father will be more happy if
he keeps his son safe, and more unhappy if he loses him. What follows,
then? when a man is made happier by me and is freed from the greatest
danger of unhappiness, does he not receive a benefit?
AD. No, because there are some things which are bestowed upon others,
and yet flow from them so as to reach ourselves; yet we must ask the
person upon whom it was bestowed for repayment; as for example, money
must be sought from the man to whom it was lent, although it may,
by some means, have come into my hands. There is no benefit whose
advantages do not extend to the receiver's nearest friends, and
sometimes even to those less intimately connected with him; yet we do
not enquire whither the benefit has proceeded from him to whom it was
first given, but where it was first placed. You must demand repayment
from the defendant himself personally.
SE. Well, but I pray you, do you not say, "you have preserved my son for
me; had he perished, I could not have survived him?" Do you not owe
a benefit for the life of one whose safety you value above your own?
Moreover, should I save your son's life, you would fall down before
my knees, and would pay vows to heaven as though you yourself had been
saved; you would say, "It makes no difference whether you have saved
mine or me; you have saved us both, yet me more than him." Why do you
say this, if you do not receive a benefit?
A.D. Because, if my son were to contract a loan, I should pay his
creditor, yet I should not, therefore, be indebted to him; or if my son
were taken in adultery, I should blush, yet I should not, therefore, be
an adulterer. I say that I am under an obligation to you for saving my
son, not because I really am, but because I am willing to constitute
myself your debtor of my own free will. On the other hand I have derived
from his safety the greatest possible pleasure and advantage, and I have
escaped that most dreadful blow, the loss of my child. True, but we are
not now discussing whether you have done me any good or not, but whether
you have bestowed a benefit upon me; for animals, stones, and herbs can
do one good, but do not bestow benefits, which can only be given by one
who wishes well to the receiver. Now you do not wish well to the father,
but only to the son; and sometimes you do not even know the father. So
when you have said, "Have I not bestowed a benefit upon the father by
saving the son?" you ought to meet this with, "Have I, then, bestowed a
benefit upon a father whom I do not know, whom I never thought of?" And
what will you say when, as is sometimes the case, you hate the father,
and yet save his son? Can you be thought to have bestowed a benefit upon
one whom you hated most bitterly while you were bestowing it?
However, if I were to lay aside the bickering of dialogue, and answer
you as a lawyer, I should say that you ought to consider the intention
of the giver, you must regard his benefit as bestowed upon the person
upon whom he meant to bestow it. If he did it in honour of the father,
then the father received the benefit; if he thought only of the son,
then the father is not laid under any obligation: by the benefit which
was conferred upon the son, even though the father derives pleasure from
it. Should he, however, have an opportunity, he will himself wish to
give you something, yet not as though he were forced to repay a debt,
but rather as if he had grounds for beginning an exchange of favours.
No return for a benefit ought to be demanded from the father of the
receiver; if he does you any kindness in return for it, he should be
regarded as, a righteous man, but not as a grateful one. For there is no
end to it; if I bestow a benefit on the receiver's father, do I likewise
bestow it upon his mother, his grandfather, his maternal uncle, his
children, relations, friends, slaves, and country? Where, then, does
a benefit begin to stop? for there follows it this endless chain of
people, to whom it is hard to assign bounds, because they join it by
degrees, and are always creeping on towards it.
XX. A common question is, "Two brothers are at variance. If I save the
life of one, do I confer a benefit upon the other, who will be sorry
that his hated brother did not perish?" There can be no doubt that it is
a benefit to do good to a man, even against that man's will, just as he,
who against his own will does a man good, does not bestow a benefit upon
him. "Do you," asks our adversary, "call that by which he is displeased
and hurt a benefit?" Yes; many benefits have a harsh and forbidding
appearance, such as cutting or burning to cure disease, or confining
with chains. We must not consider whether a man is grieved at receiving
a benefit, but whether he ought to rejoice: a coin is not bad because it
is refused by a savage who is unacquainted with its proper stamp. A man
receives a benefit even though he hates what is done, provided that it
does him good, and that the giver bestowed it in order to do him good.
It makes no difference if he receives a good thing in a bad spirit.
Consider the converse of this. Suppose that a man hates his brother,
though it is to his advantage to have a brother, and I kill this
brother, this is not a benefit, though he may say that it is, and be
glad of it. Our most artful enemies are those whom we thank for the
wrongs which they do us.
"I understand; a thing which does good is a benefit, a thing which does
harm is not a benefit. Now I will suggest to you an act which neither
does good nor harm, and yet is a benefit. Suppose that I find the corpse
of some one's father in a wilderness, and bury it, then I certainly
have done him no good, for what difference could it make to him in what
manner his body decayed? Nor have I done any good to his son, for what
advantage does he gain by my act?" I will tell you what he gains. He has
by my means performed a solemn and necessary rite; I have performed a
service for his father which he would have wished, nay, which it would
have been his duty to have performed himself. Yet this act is not a
benefit, if I merely yielded to those feelings of pity and kindliness
which would make me bury any corpse whatever, but only if I recognized
this body, and buried it, with the thought in my mind that I was doing
this service to the son; but, by merely throwing earth over a dead
stranger, I lay no one under an obligation for an act performed on
general principles of humanity.
It may be asked, "Why are you so careful in inquiring upon whom you
bestow benefits, as though some day you meant to demand repayment of
them? Some say that repayment should never be demanded; and they give
the following reasons. An unworthy man will not repay the benefit which
he has received, even if it be demanded of him, while a worthy man will
do so of his own accord. Consequently, if you have bestowed it upon a
good man, wait; do not outrage him by asking him for it, as though of
his own accord he never would repay it. If you have bestowed it upon a
bad man, suffer for it, but do not spoil your benefit by turning it
into a loan. Moreover the law, by not authorizing you, forbids you,
by implication, to demand the repayment of a benefit." All this is
nonsense. As long as I am in no pressing need, as long as I am
not forced by poverty, I will lose my benefits rather than ask for
repayment; but if the lives of my children were at stake, if my wife
were in danger, if my regard for the welfare of my country and for
my own liberty were to force me to adopt a course which I disliked, I
should overcome my delicacy, and openly declare that I had done all that
I could to avoid the necessity of receiving help from an ungrateful man;
the necessity of obtaining repayment of one's benefit will in the end
overcome one's delicacy about asking for it. In the next place, when I
bestow a benefit upon a good man, I do so with the intention of never
demanding repayment, except in case of absolute necessity.
XXI. "But," argues he, "by not authorizing you, the law forbids you to
exact repayment." There are many things which are not enforced by any
law or process, but which the conventions of society, which are stronger
than any law, compel us to observe. There is no law forbidding us to
divulge our friend's secrets; there is no law which bids us keep faith
even with an enemy; pray what law is there which binds us to stand by
what we have promised? There is none. Nevertheless I should remonstrate
with one who did not keep a secret, and I should be indignant with one
who pledged his word and broke it. "But," he argues, "you are turning a
benefit into a loan." By no means, for I do not insist upon repayment,
but only demand it; nay, I do not even demand it, but remind my friend
of it. Even the direst need will not bring me to apply for help to one
with whom I should have to undergo a long struggle.
If there be any one so ungrateful that it is not sufficient to remind
him of his debt, I should pass him over, and think that he did not
deserve to be made grateful by force. A money-lender does not demand
repayment from his debtors if he knows they have become bankrupt, and,
to their shame, have nothing but shame left to lose; and I, like him,
should pass over those who are openly and obstinately ungrateful, and
would demand repayment only from those who were likely to give it me,
not from those from whom I should have to extort it by force.
XXII. There are many who cannot deny that they have received a benefit,
yet cannot return it--men who are not good enough to be termed grateful,
nor yet bad enough to be termed ungrateful; but who are dull and
sluggish, backward debtors, though not defaulters. Such men as these I
should not ask for repayment, but forcibly remind them of it, and, from
a state of indifference, bring them back to their duty. They would at
once reply, "Forgive me; I did not know, by Hercules, that you missed
this, or I would have offered it of my own accord, I beg that you will
not think me ungrateful; I remember your goodness to me." Why need I
hesitate to make such men as these better to themselves and to me? I
would prevent any one from doing wrong, if I were able; much more would
I prevent a friend, both lest he should do wrong, and lest he should
do wrong to me in particular. I bestow a second benefit upon him by not
permitting him to be ungrateful; and I should not reproach him harshly
with what I had done for him, but should speak as gently as I could. In
order to afford him an opportunity of returning my kindness, I
should refresh his remembrance of it, and ask for a benefit; he would
understand that I was asking for repayment. Sometimes I would make use
of somewhat severe language, if I had any hope that by it he might be
amended; though I would not irritate a hopelessly ungrateful man, for