L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
fear that I might turn him into an enemy. If we spare the ungrateful
even the affront of reminding them of their conduct, we shall render
them' more backward in returning benefits; and although some might
be cured of their evil ways, and be made into good men, if their
consciences were stung by remorse, yet we shall allow them to perish for
want of a word of warning, with which a father sometimes corrects
his son, a wife brings back to herself an erring husband, or a man
stimulates the wavering fidelity of his friend.
XXIII. To awaken some men, it is only necessary to stir them, not to
strike them; in like manner, with some men, the feeling of honour about
returning a benefit is not extinct, but slumbering. Let us rouse it. "Do
not," they will say, "make the kindness you have done me into a wrong:
for it is a wrong, if you do not demand some return from me, and so make
me ungrateful. What if I do not know what sort of repayment you wish
for? if I am so occupied by business, and my attention is so much
diverted to other subjects that I have not been able to watch for an
opportunity of serving you? Point out to me what I can do for you, what
you wish me to do. Why do you despair, before making a trial of me? Why
are you in such haste to lose both your benefit and your friend? How can
you tell whether I do not wish, or whether I do not know how to repay
you: whether it be in intention or in opportunity that I am wanting?
Make a trial of me." I would therefore remind him of what I had done,
without bitterness, not in public, or in a reproachful manner, but so
that he may think that he himself has remembered it rather than that it
has been recalled to him.
XXIV. One of Julius Caesar's veterans was once pleading before him
against his neighbours, and the cause was going against him. "Do you
remember, general," said he, "that in Spain you dislocated your ankle
near the river Sucro [Footnote: Xucar]?" When Caesar said that he
remembered it, he continued, "Do you remember that when, during the
excessive heat, you wished to rest under a tree which afforded very
little shade, as the ground in which that solitary tree grew was rough
and rocky, one of your comrades spread his cloak under you?" Caesar
answered, "Of course, I remember; indeed, I was perishing with thirst;
and since was unable to walk to the nearest spring, I would have crawled
thither on my hands and knees, had not my comrade, a brave and active
man, brought me water in his helmet." "Could you, then, my general,
recognize that man or that helmet?" Caesar replied that he could not
remember the helmet, but that he could remember the man well; and he
added, I fancy in anger at being led away to this old story in the midst
of a judicial enquiry, "At any rate, you are not he." "I do not blame
you, Caesar," answered the man, "for not recognizing me; for when this
took place, I was unwounded; but afterwards, at the battle of Munda,
my eye was struck out, and the bones of my skull crushed. Nor would
you recognize that helmet if you saw it, for it was split by a Spanish
sword." Caesar would not permit this man to be troubled with lawsuits,
and presented his old soldier with the fields through which a village
right of way had given rise to the dispute.
XXV. In this case, what ought he to have done? Because his commander's
memory was confused by a multitude of incidents, and because his
position as the leader of vast armies did not permit him to notice
individual soldiers, ought the man not to have asked for a return for
the benefit which he had conferred? To act as he did is not so much to
ask for a return as to take it when it lies in a convenient position
ready for us, although we have to stretch out our hands in order to
receive it. I shall therefore ask for the return of a benefit, whenever
I am either reduced to great straits, or where by doing so I shall act
to the advantage of him from whom I ask it. Tiberius Caesar, when some
one addressed him with the words, "Do you remember....?" answered,
before the man could mention any further proofs of former acquaintance,
"I do not remember what I was." Why should it not be forbidden to demand
of this man repayment of former favours? He had a motive for forgetting
them: he denied all knowledge of his friends and comrades, and wished
men only to see, to think, and to speak of him as emperor. He regarded
his old friend as an impertinent meddler.
We ought to be even more careful to choose a favorable opportunity when
we ask for a benefit to be repaid to us than when we ask for one to
be bestowed upon us. We must be temperate in our language, so that the
grateful may not take offence, or the ungrateful pretend to do so. If we
lived among wise men, it would be our duty to wait in silence until our
benefits were returned. Yet even to wise men it would be better to give
some hint of what our position required. We ask for help even from
the gods themselves, from whose knowledge nothing is hid, although our
prayers cannot alter their intentions towards us, but can only recall
them to their minds. Homer's priest, [Il. i. 39 sqq.] I say, recounts
even to the gods his duteous conduct and his pious care of their
altars. The second best form of virtue is to be willing and able to take
advice.[Hes. Op. 291.] A horse who is docile and prompt to obey can be
guided hither and thither by the slightest movement of the reins. Very
few men are led by their own reason: those who come next to the best are
those who return to the right path in consequence of advice; and these
we must not deprive of their guide. When our eyes are covered they still
possess sight; but it is the light of day which, when admitted to them,
summons them to perform their duty: tools lie idle, unless the workman
uses them to take part in his work. Similarly men's minds contain a good
feeling, which, however, lies torpid, either through luxury and disuse,
or through ignorance of its duties. This we ought to render useful, and
not to get into a passion with it, and leave it in its wrong doing, but
bear with it patiently, just as schoolmasters bear patiently with the
blunders of forgetful scholars; for as by the prompting of a word or two
their memory is often recalled to the text of the speech which they
have to repeat, so men's goodwill can be brought to return kindness by
reminding them of it.
BOOK VI.
I.
There are some things, my most excellent Liberalis, which lie completely
outside of our actual life, and which we only inquire into in order to
exercise our intellects, while others both give us pleasure while we are
discovering them, and are of use when discovered. I will place all these
in your hands; you, at your own discretion, may order them either to
be investigated thoroughly, or to be reserved, and be used as agreeable
interludes. Something will be gained even by those which you dismiss at
once, for it is advantageous even to know what subjects are not worth
learning. I shall be guided, therefore, by your face: according to its
expression, I shall deal with some questions at greater length, and
drive others out of court, and put an end to them at once.
II. It is a question whether a benefit can be taken away from one by
force. Some say that it cannot, because it is not a thing, but an act. A
gift is not the same as the act of giving, any more than a sailor is the
same as the act of sailing. A sick man and a disease are not the same
thing, although no one can be ill without disease; and, similarly,
a benefit itself is one thing, and what any of us receive through a
benefit is another. The benefit itself is incorporeal, and never becomes
invalid; but its subject-matter changes owners, and passes from hand to
hand. So, when you take away from anyone what you have given him,
you take away the subject-matter only of the benefit, not the benefit
itself. Nature herself cannot recall what she has given. She may cease
to bestow benefits, but cannot take them away: a man who dies, yet has
lived; a man who becomes blind, nevertheless has seen. She can cut off
her blessings from us in the future, but she cannot prevent our having
enjoyed them in the past. We are frequently not able to enjoy a benefit
for long, but the benefit is not thereby destroyed. Let Nature struggle
as hard as she please, she cannot give herself retrospective action. A
man may lose his house, his money, his property--everything to which the
name of benefit can be given--yet the benefit itself will remain firm
and unmoved; no power can prevent his benefactor's having bestowed them,
or his having received them.
III. I think that a fine passage in Rabirius's poem, where M. Antonius,
seeing his fortune deserting him, nothing left him except the privilege
of dying, and even that only on condition that he used it promptly,
exclaims,
"What I have given, that I now possess!"
How much he might have possessed, had he chosen! These are riches to be
depended upon, which through all the turmoil of human life will remain
steadfast; and the greater they are, the less envy they will attract.
Why are you sparing of your property, as though it were your own? You
are but the manager of it. All those treasures, which make you swell
with pride, and soar above mere mortals, till you forget the weakness of
your nature; all that which you lock up in iron-grated treasuries, and
guard in arms, which you win from other men with their lives, and defend
at the risk of your own; for which you launch fleets to dye the sea with
blood, and shake the walls of cities, not knowing what arrows fortune
may be preparing for you behind your back; to gain which you have so
often violated all the ties of relationship, of friendship, and of
colleagueship, till the whole world lies crushed between the two
combatants: all these are not yours; they are a kind of deposit, which
is on the point of passing into other hands: your enemies, or your
heirs, who are little better, will seize upon them. "How," do you ask,
"can you make them your own?" "By giving them away." Do, then, what is
best for your own interests, and gain a sure enjoyment of them, which
cannot be taken from you, making them at once more certainly yours, and
more honorable to you. That which you esteem so highly, that by which
you think that you are made rich and powerful, owns but the shabby title
of "house," "slave," or "money;" but when you have given it away, it
becomes a benefit.
IV. "You admit," says our adversary, "that we sometimes are under no
obligation to him from whom we have received a benefit. In that case it
has been taken by force." Nay, there are many things which would cause
us to cease to feel gratitude for a benefit, not because the benefit has
been taken from me, but because it has been spoiled. Suppose that a man
has defended me in a lawsuit, but has forcibly outraged my wife; he has
not taken away the benefit which he conferred upon me, but by balancing
it with an equivalent wrong, he has set me free from my debt; indeed, if
he has injured me more than he had previously benefited me, he not only
puts an end to my gratitude, but makes me free to revenge myself upon
him, and to complain of him, when the wrong outweighs the benefit; in
such a case the benefit is not taken away, but is overcome. Why, are
not some fathers so cruel and so wicked that it is right and proper for
their sons to turn away from them, and disown them? Yet, pray, have they
taken away the life which they gave? No, but their unnatural conduct in
later years has destroyed all the gratitude which was due to them for
their original benefit. In these cases it is not a benefit itself, but
the gratitude owing for a benefit which is taken away, and the result
is, not that one does not possess the benefit, but that one is not laid