L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
under any obligation by it. It is as though a man were to lend me money,
and then burn my house down; the advantage of the loan is balanced by
the damage which he has caused: I do not repay him, and yet I am not
in his debt. In like manner any one who may have acted kindly and
generously to me, and who afterwards has shown himself haughty,
insulting, and cruel, places me in just the same position as though I
never had received anything from him: he has murdered his own benefits.
Though the lease may remain in force, still a man does not continue to
be a tenant if his landlord tramples down his crops, or cuts down his
orchard; their contract is at an end, not because the landlord has
received the rent which was agreed upon, but because he has made it
impossible that he should receive it. So, too, a creditor often has to
pay money to his debtor, should he have taken more property from him in
other transactions than he claims as having lent him. The judge does not
sit merely to decide between debtor and creditor, when he says, "You did
lend the man money; but then, what followed? You have driven away his
cattle, you have murdered his slave, you have in your possession plate
which you have not paid for. After valuing what each has received,
I order you, who came to this court as a creditor, to leave it as
a debtor." In like manner a balance is struck between benefits and
injuries. In many cases, I repeat, a benefit is not taken away from him
who receives it, and yet it lays him under no obligation, if the giver
has repented of giving it, called himself unhappy because he gave it,
sighed or made a wry face while he gave it; if he thought that he was
throwing it away rather than giving it, if he gave it to please himself,
or to please any one except me, the receiver; if he persistently makes
himself offensive by boasting of what he has done, if he brags of his
gift everywhere, and makes it a misery to me, then indeed the benefit
remains in my hands, but I owe him nothing for it, just as sums of money
to which a creditor has no legal right are owed to him, but cannot be
claimed by him.
V. Though you have bestowed a benefit upon me, yet you have since
done me a wrong; the benefit demanded gratitude, the wrong required
vengeance: the result is that I do not owe you gratitude, nor do you
owe me compensation--each is cancelled by the other. When we say, "I
returned him his benefit," we do not mean that we restored to him the
very thing which we had received, but something else in its place. To
return is to give back one thing instead of another, because, of course,
in all repayment it is not the thing itself, but its equivalent which
is returned. We are said to have returned money even though we count out
gold pieces instead of silver ones, or even if no money passes between
us, but the transaction be effected verbally by the assignment of a
debt.
I think I see you say, "You are wasting your time; of what use is it
to me to know whether what I do not owe to another still remains in my
hands or not? These are like the ingenious subtleties of the lawyers,
who declare that one cannot acquire an inheritance by prescription,
but can only acquire those things of which the inheritance consists, as
though there were any difference between the heritage and the things of
which it consists. Rather decide this point for me, which may be of
use. If the same man confers a benefit upon me, and afterwards does me
a wrong, is it my duty to return the benefit to him, and nevertheless to
avenge myself upon him, having, as it were, two distinct accounts open
with him, or to mix them both together, and do nothing, leaving the
benefit to be wiped out by the injury, the injury by the benefit? I see
that the former course is adopted by the law of the land; you know
best what the law may be among you Stoic philosophers in such a case. I
suppose that you keep the action which I bring against another distinct
from that which he Strings against me, and the two processes are not
merged into one? For instance, if a man entrusts me with money, and
afterwards robs me, I shall bring an action against him for theft, and
he will bring one against me for unlawfully detaining his property?"
VI. The cases which you have mentioned, my Liberalis, come under
well-established laws, which it is necessary for us to follow. One law
cannot be merged in another: each one proceeds its own way. There is a
particular action which deals with deposits just as there is one which
deals with theft. A benefit is subject to no law; it depends upon my
own arbitration. I am at liberty to contrast the amount of good or
harm which any one may have done me, and then to decide which of us is
indebted to the other. In legal processes we ourselves have no power, we
must go whither they lead us; in the case of a benefit the supreme
power is mine, I pronounce sentence. Consequently I do not separate or
distinguish between benefits and wrongs, but send them before the same
judge. Unless I did so, you would bid me love and hate, give thanks and
make complaints at the same time, which human nature does not admit of.
I would rather compare the benefit and the injury with one another, and
see whether there were any balance in my favour. If anybody puts lines
of other writing upon my manuscript he conceals, though he does not take
away, the letters which were there before, and in like manner a wrong
coming after a benefit does not allow it to be seen.
VII. Your face, by which I have agreed to be guided, now becomes
wrinkled with frowns, as though I were straying too widely from the
subject. You seem to say to me:
"Why steer to seaward?
Hither bend thy course,
Hug close the shore..."
I do hug it as close as possible. So now, if you think that we have
dwelt sufficiently upon this point, let us proceed to the consideration
of the next--that is, whether we are at all indebted to any one who
does us good without wishing to do so. I might have expressed this
more clearly, if it were not right that the question should be somewhat
obscurely stated, in order that by the distinction immediately following
it may be shown that we mean to investigate the case both of him who
does us good against his will, and that of him who does us good without
knowing it. That a man who does us good by acting under compulsion does
not thereby lay us under any obligation, is so clear, that no words
are needed to prove it. Both this question, and any other of the like
character which may be raised, can easily be settled if in each case we
bear in mind that, for anything to be a benefit, it must reach us in the
first place through some thought, and secondly through the thought of a
friend and well-wisher. Therefore we do not feel any gratitude towards
rivers, albeit they may bear large ships, afford an ample and unvarying
stream for the conveyance of merchandise, or flow beauteously and full
of fish through fertile fields. No one conceives himself to be indebted
for a benefit to the Nile, any more than he would owe it a grudge if its
waters flooded his fields to excess, and retired more slowly than usual;
the wind does not bestow benefits, gentle and favorable though it
may be, nor does wholesome and useful food; for he who would bestow a
benefit upon me, must not only do me good, but must wish to do so. No
obligation can therefore be incurred towards dumb animals; yet how many
men have been saved from peril by the swiftness of a horse!--nor
yet towards trees--yet how many sufferers from summer heat have been
sheltered by the thick foliage of a tree! What difference can it make,
whether I have profited by the act of one who did not know that he was
doing me good, or one who could not know it, when in each case the will
to do me good was wanting? You might as well bid me be grateful to a
ship, a carriage, or a lance for saving me from danger, as bid me be
grateful to a man who may have done me good by chance, but with no more
intention of doing me good than those things could have.
VIII. Some men may receive benefits without knowing it, but no man can
bestow them without knowing it. Many sick persons have been cured by
chance circumstances, which do not therefore become specific remedies;
as, for instance, one man was restored to health by falling into a river
during very cold weather, as another was set free from a quartan fever
by means of a flogging, because the sudden terror turned his attention
into a new channel, so that the dangerous hours passed unnoticed. Yet
none of these are remedies, even though they may have been
successful; and in like manner some men do us good, though they are
unwilling--indeed, because they are unwilling to do so--yet we need not
feel grateful to them as though we had received a benefit from them,
because fortune has changed the evil which they intended into good. Do
you suppose that I am indebted to a man who strikes my enemy with a blow
which he aimed at me, who would have injured me had he not missed his
mark? It often happens that by openly perjuring himself a man makes even
trustworthy witnesses disbelieved, and renders his intended victim an
object of compassion, as though he were being ruined by a conspiracy.
Some have been saved by the very power which was exerted to crush
them, and judges who would have condemned a man by law, have refused
to condemn him by favour. Yet they did not confer a benefit upon the
accused, although they rendered him a service, because we must
consider at what the dart was aimed, not what it hits, and a benefit
is distinguished from an injury not by its result, but by the spirit in
which it was meant. By contradicting himself, by irritating the judge by
his arrogance, or by rashly allowing his whole case to depend upon the
testimony of one witness, my opponent may have saved my cause. I do not
consider whether his mistakes benefited me or not, for he wished me ill.
IX. In order that I may be grateful, I must wish to do what my
benefactor must have wished in order that he might bestow a benefit. Can
anything be more unjust than to bear a grudge against a person who may
have trodden upon one's foot in a crowd, or splashed one, or pushed one
the way which one did not wish to go? Yet it was by his act that we were
injured, and we only refrain from complaining of him, because he did not
know what he was doing. The same reason makes it possible for men to do
us good without conferring benefits upon us, or to harm us without doing
us wrong, because it is intention which distinguishes our friends
from our enemies. How many have been saved from service in the army by
sickness! Some men have been saved from sharing the fall of their house,
by being brought up upon their recognizances to a court of law by their
enemies; some have been saved by ship-wreck from falling into the hands
of pirates; yet we do not feel grateful to such things, because chance
has no feeling of the service it renders, nor are we grateful to our
enemy, though his lawsuit, while it harassed and detained us, still
saved our lives. Nothing can be a benefit which does not proceed from
good will, and which is not meant as such by the giver. If any one
does me a service, without knowing it, I am under no obligation to him;
should he do so, meaning to injure me, I shall imitate his conduct.
X. Let us turn our attention to the first of these. Can you desire me to
do anything to express my gratitude to a man who did nothing in order to
confer a benefit upon me? Passing on to the next, do you wish me to show
my gratitude to such a man, and of my own will to return to him what I
received from him against his will? What am I to say of the third, he
who, meaning to do an injury, blunders into bestowing a benefit? That