L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
my anxious friends, and came to see me at the crises of my disorder;
that no service was too troublesome or too disgusting for him to
perform; that he did not hear my groans unmoved; that among the numbers
who called for him I was his favourite case; and that he gave the others
only so much time as his care of my health permitted him: I should feel
obliged to such a man not as to a physician, but as to a friend. Suppose
again that my teacher endured labour and weariness in instructing me;
that he taught me something more than is taught by all masters alike;
that he roused my better feelings by his encouragement, and that at
one time he would raise my spirits by praise, and at another warn me
to shake off slothfulness: that he laid his hand, as it were, upon my
latent and torpid powers of intellect and drew them out into the light
of day; that he did not stingily dole out to me what he knew, in order
that he might be wanted for a longer time, but was eager, if possible,
to pour all his learning into me; then I am ungrateful, if I do not love
him as much as I love my nearest relatives and my dearest friends.
XVII. We give something additional even to those who teach the meanest
trades, if their efforts appear to be extraordinary; we bestow a
gratuity upon pilots, upon workmen who deal with the commonest materials
and hire themselves out by the day. In the noblest arts, however, those
which either preserve or beautify our lives, a man would be ungrateful
who thinks he owes the artist no more than he bargained for. Besides
this, the teaching of such learning as we have spoken of blends mind
with mind; now when this takes place, both in the case of the physician
and of the teacher the price of his work is paid, but that of his mind
remains owing.
XVIII. Plato once crossed a river, and as the ferryman did not ask him
for anything, he supposed that he had let him pass free out of respect,
and said that the ferryman had laid Plato under an obligation. Shortly
afterwards, seeing the ferryman take one person after another across the
river with the same pains, and without charging anything, Plato declared
that the ferryman had not laid him under an obligation. If you wish me
to be grateful for what you give, you must not merely give it to me, but
show that you mean it specially for me; you cannot make any claim upon
one for having given him what you fling away broad-cast among the crowd.
What then? shall I owe you nothing for it? Nothing, as an individual; I
will pay, when the rest of mankind do, what I owe no more than they.
XIX. "Do you say," inquires my opponent, "that he who carries me gratis
in a boat across the river Po, does not bestow any benefit upon me?" I
do. He does me some good, but he does not bestow a benefit upon me; for
he does it for his own sake, or at any rate not for mine; in short, he
himself does not imagine that he is bestowing a benefit upon me, but
does it for the credit of the State, or of the neighbourhood, or of
himself, and expects some return for doing so, different from what he
would receive from individual passengers. "Well," asks my opponent, "if
the emperor were to grant the franchise to all the Gauls, or exemption,
from taxes to all the Spaniards, would each individual of them owe him
nothing on that account?" Of course he would: but he would be indebted
to him, not as having personally received a benefit intended for himself
alone, but as a partaker in one conferred upon his nation. He would
argue, "The emperor had no thought of me at the time when he benefited
us all; he did not care to give me the franchise separately, he did not
fix his attention upon me; why then should I be grateful to one who did
not have me in his mind when he was thinking of doing what he did? In
answer to this, I say that when he thought of doing good to all the
Gauls, he thought of doing good to me also, for I was a Gaul, and he
included me under my national, if not under my personal appellation. In
like manner, I should feel grateful to him, not as for a personal, but
for a general benefit; being only one of the people, I should regard
the debt of gratitude as incurred, not by myself, but by my country, and
should not pay it myself, but only contribute my share towards doing so.
I do not call a man my creditor because he has lent money to my country,
nor should I include that money in a schedule of my debts were I either
a candidate for a public office, or a defendant in the courts; yet I
would pay my share towards extinguishing such a debt. Similarly, I deny
that I am laid under an obligation by a gift bestowed upon my entire
nation, because although the giver gave it to me, yet he did not do so
for my sake, but gave it without knowing whether he was giving it to me
or not: nevertheless I should feel that I owed something for the
gift, because it did reach me, though not directly. To lay me under an
obligation, a thing must be done for my sake alone."
XX. "According to this," argues our opponent, "you are under no
obligation to the sun or the moon; for they do not move for your sake
alone." No, but since they move with the object of preserving the
balance of the universe, they move for my sake also, seeing that I am
a fraction of the universe. Besides, our position and theirs is not the
same, for he who does me good in order that he may by my means do good
to himself, does not bestow a benefit upon me, because he merely makes
use of me as an instrument for his own advantage; whereas the sun and
the moon, even if they do us good for their own sakes, still cannot do
good to us in order that by our means they may do good to themselves,
for what is there which we can bestow upon them?
XXI. "I should be sure," replies he, "that the sun and the moon wished
to do us good, if they were able to refuse to do so; but they cannot
help moving as they do. In short, let them stop and discontinue their
work."
See now, in how many ways this argument may be refuted. One who cannot
refuse to do a thing may nevertheless wish to do it; indeed there is no
greater proof of a fixed desire to do anything, than not to be able to
alter one's determination. A good man cannot leave undone what he does:
for unless he does it he will not be a good man. Is a good man, then,
not able to bestow a benefit, because he does what he ought to do, and
is not able not to do what he ought to do? Besides this, it makes
a great difference whether you say, "He is not able not to do this,
because he is forced to do it," or "He is not able to wish not to do
it;" for, if he could not help doing it, then I am not indebted for it
to him, but to the person who forced him to do it; if he could not help
wishing for it because he had nothing better to wish for, then it is he
who forces himself to do it, and in this case the debt which as acting
under compulsion he could not claim, is due to him as compelling
himself.
"Let the sun and moon cease to wish to benefit us," says our adversary.
I answer, "Remember what has been said. Who can be so crazy as to refuse
the name of free-will to that which has no danger of ceasing to act, and
of adopting the opposite course, since, on the contrary, he whose will
is fixed for ever, must be thought to wish more earnestly than any one
else. Surely if he, who may at any moment change his mind, can be said
to wish, we must not deny the existence of will in a being whose nature
does not admit of change of mind."
XXII. "Well," says he "let them stop, if it be possible." What you say
is this:--"Let all those heavenly bodies, placed as they are at vast
distances from each other, and arranged to preserve the balance of the
universe, leave their appointed posts: let sudden confusion arise,
so that constellations may collide with constellations, that the
established harmony of all things may be destroyed and the works of God
be shaken into ruin; let the whole frame of the rapidly moving heavenly
bodies abandon in mid career those movements which we were assured would
endure for ages, and let those which now by their regular advance and
retreat keep the world at a moderate temperature, be instantly consumed
by fire, so that instead of the infinite variety of the seasons all may
be reduced to one uniform condition; let fire rage everywhere, followed
by dull night, and let the bottomless abyss swallow up all the gods." Is
it worth while to destroy all this merely in order to refute you? Even
though you do not wish it, they do you good, and they wheel in their
courses for your sake, though their motion may be due to some earlier
and more important cause.
XXIII. Besides this, the gods act under no external constraint, but
their own will is a law to them for all time. They have established an
order which is not to be changed, and consequently it is impossible that
they should appear to be likely to do anything against their will, since
they wish to continue doing whatever they cannot cease from doing, and
they never regret their original decision, No doubt it is impossible for
them to stop short, or to desert to the other side, but it is so for no
other reason than that their own force holds them to their purpose. It
is from no weakness that they persevere; no, they have no mind to leave
the best course, and by this it is fated that they should proceed. When,
at the time of the original creation, they arranged the entire universe,
they paid attention to us as well as to the rest, and took thought about
the human race; and for this reason we cannot suppose that it is merely
for their own pleasure that they move in their orbits and display their
work since we also are a part of that work. We are, therefore; under
an obligation to the sun and moon and the rest of the heavenly host,
because, although they may rise in order to bestow more important
benefits than those which we receive from them, yet they do bestow these
upon us as they pass on their way to greater things. Besides this, they
assist us of set purpose, and, therefore, lay us under an obligation,
because we do not in their case stumble by chance upon a benefit
bestowed by one who knew not what he was doing, but they knew that we
should receive from them the advantages which we do; so that, though
they may have some higher aim, though the result of their movements may
be something of greater importance than the preservation of the human
race, yet from the beginning thought has been directed to our comforts,
and the scheme of the world has been arranged in a fashion which proves
that our interests were neither their least nor last concern. It is our
duty to show filial love for our parents, although many of them had no
thought of children when they married. Not so with the gods: they cannot
but have known what they were doing when they furnished mankind with
food and comforts. Those for whose advantage so much was created, could
not have been created without design. Nature conceived the idea of us
before she formed us, and, indeed, we are no such trifling piece of work
as could have fallen from her hands unheeded. See how great privileges
she has bestowed upon us, how far beyond the human race the empire of
mankind extends; consider how widely she allows us to roam, not having
restricted us to the land alone, but permitted us to traverse every part
of herself; consider, too, the audacity of our intellect, the only one
which knows of the gods or seeks for them, and how we can raise our mind
high above the earth, and commune with those divine influences: you will
perceive that man is not a hurriedly put together, or an unstudied piece
of work. Among her noblest products nature has none of which she can
boast more than man, and assuredly no other which can comprehend her
boast. What madness is this, to call the gods in question for their