L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
you? What? if you had received anything from a man when healthy, would
you not return it to him when he was sick, though we always are more
bound to treat our friends with more kindness when they are ailing? So,
too, this man is sick in his mind; we ought to help him, and bear with
him; folly is a disease of the mind.
XVII. I think here we ought to make a distinction, in order to render
this point more intelligible. Benefits are of two kinds: one, the
perfect and true benefit, which can only be bestowed by one wise man
upon another; the other, the common vulgar form which ignorant men like
ourselves interchange. With regard to the latter, there is no doubt that
it is my duty to repay it whether my friend turns out to be a murderer,
a thief, or an adulterer. Crimes have laws to punish them; criminals are
better reformed by judges than by ingratitude; a man ought not to make
you bad by being so himself. I will fling a benefit back to a bad man, I
will return it to a good man; I do so to the latter, because I owe it to
him; to the former, that I may not be in his debt.
XVIII. With regard to the other class of benefit, the question arises
whether if I was not able to take it without being a wise man, I am able
to return it, except to a wise man. For suppose I do return it to him,
he cannot receive it, he is not any longer able to receive such a thing,
he has lost the knowledge of how to use it. You would not bid me throw
back [Footnote: i.e. in the game of ball.] a ball to a man who has lost
his hand; it is folly to give any one what he cannot receive. If I am
to begin to reply to the last argument, I say that I should not give him
what he is unable to take; but I would return it, even though he is not
able to receive it. I cannot lay him under an obligation unless he takes
my bounty; but by returning it I can free myself from my obligations to
him. You say, "he will not be able to use it." Let him see to that; the
fault will lie with him, not with me.
XIX. "To return a thing," says our adversary, "is to hand it over to one
who can receive it. Why, if you owed some wine to any man, and he bade
you pour it into a net or a sieve, would you say that you had returned
it? or would you be willing to return it in such a way that in the act
of returning it was lost between you?" To return is to give that which
you owe back to its owner when he wishes for it. It is not my duty to
perform more than this; that he should possess what he has received
from me is a matter for further consideration; I do not owe him the
safe-keeping of his property, but the honourable payment of my debt,
and it is much better that he should not have it, than that I should
not return it to him. I would repay my creditor, even though he would
at once take what I paid him to the market; even if he deputed an
adulteress to receive the money from me, I would pay it to her; even
if he were to pour the coins which he receives into a loose fold of his
cloak, I would pay it. It is my business to return it to him, not to
keep it and save it for him after I have returned it; I am bound to take
care of his bounty when I have received it, but not when I have returned
it to him. While it remains with me, it must be kept safe; but when he
asks for it again I must give it to him, even though it slips out of his
hands as he takes it. I will repay a good man when it is convenient; I
will repay a bad man when he asks me to do so.
"You cannot," argues our adversary, "return him a benefit of the same
kind as that which you received; for you received it from a wise man,
and you are returning it to a fool." Do I not return to him such a
benefit, as he is now able to receive? It is not my fault if I return it
to him worse than I received it, the fault lies with him, and so, unless
he regains his former wisdom, I shall return it in such a form as he
in his fallen condition is able to receive. "But what," asks he, "if
he become not only bad, but savage and ferocious, like Apollodorus or
Phalaris, would you return even to such a man as this a benefit which
you had received from him?" I answer, Nature does not admit of so great
a change in a wise man. Men do not change from the best to the worst;
even in becoming bad, he would necessarily retain some traces of
goodness; virtue is never so utterly quenched as not to imprint on the
mind marks which no degradation can efface. If wild animals bred in
captivity escape into the woods, they still retain something of their
original tameness, and are as remote from the gentlest in the one
extreme as they are in the other from those which have always been wild,
and have never endured to be touched by man's hand. No one who has ever
applied himself to philosophy ever becomes completely wicked; his mind
becomes so deeply coloured with it, that its tints can never be entirely
spoiled and blackened. In the next place, I ask whether this man of
yours be ferocious merely in intent, or whether he breaks out into
actual outrages upon mankind? You have instanced the tyrants Apollodorus
and Phalaris; if the bad man restrains their evil likeness within
himself, why should I not return his benefit to him, in order to set
myself free from any further dealings with him? If, however, he not
only delights in human blood, but feeds upon it; if he exercises his
insatiable cruelty in the torture of persons of all ages, and his fury
is not prompted by anger, but by a sort of delight in cruelty, if he
cuts the throats of children before the eyes of their parents; if, not
satisfied with merely killing his victims, he tortures them, and not
only burns but actually roasts them; if his castle is always wet with
freshly shed blood; then it is not enough not to return his benefits.
All connexion between me and such a man has been broken off by his
destruction of the bonds of human society. If he had bestowed something
upon me, but were to invade my native country, he would have lost all
claim to my gratitude, and it would be counted a crime to make him any
return; if he does not attack my country, but is the scourge of his own;
if he has nothing to do with my nation, but torments and cuts to pieces
his own, then in the same manner such depravity, though it does not
render him my personal enemy, yet renders him hateful to me, and the
duty which I owe to the human race is anterior to and more important
than that which I owe to him as an individual.
XX. However, although this be so, and although I am freed from all
obligation towards him, from the moment when, by outraging all laws, he
rendered it impossible for any man to do him a wrong, nevertheless, I
think I ought to make the following distinction in dealing with him.
If my repayment of his benefit will neither increase nor maintain his
powers of doing mischief to mankind, and is of such a character that I
can return it to him without disadvantage to the public, I would return
it: for instance, I would save the life of his infant child; for what
harm can this benefit do to any of those who suffer from his cruelty?
But I would not furnish him with money to pay his bodyguard. If he
wishes for marbles, or fine clothes, the trappings of his luxury will
harm no one; but with soldiers and arms I would not furnish him. If he
demands, as a great boon, actors and courtesans and such things as will
soften his savage nature, I would willingly bestow them upon him. I
would not furnish him with triremes and brass-beaked ships of war, but I
would send him fast sailing and luxuriously-fitted vessels, and all
the toys of kings who take their pleasure on the sea. If his health was
altogether despaired of, I would by the same act bestow a benefit on all
men and return one to him; seeing that for such characters death is
the only remedy, and that he who never will return to himself, had best
leave himself. However, such wickedness as this is uncommon, and is
always regarded as a portent, as when the earth opens, or when fires
break forth from caves under the sea; so let us leave it, and speak of
those vices which we can hate without shuddering at them. As for the
ordinary bad man, whom I can find in the marketplace of any town, who is
feared only by individuals, I would return to him a benefit which I
had received from him. It is not right that I should profit by his
wickedness; let me return what is not mine to its owner. Whether he be
good or bad makes no difference; but I would consider the matter most
carefully, if I were not returning but bestowing it.
XXI. This point requires to be illustrated by a story. A certain
Pythagoraean bought a fine pair of shoes from a shoemaker; and as they
were an expensive piece of work, he did not pay ready money for them.
Some time afterwards he came to the shop to pay for them, and after he
had long been knocking at the closed door, some one said to him, "Why do
you waste your time? The shoemaker whom you seek has been carried out
of his house and buried; this is a grief to us who lose our friends for
ever, but by no means so to you, who know that he will be born again,"
jeering at the Pythagoraean. Upon this our philosopher not unwillingly
carried his three or four denarii home again, shaking them every now and
then; afterwards, blaming himself for the pleasure which he had secretly
felt at not paying his debt, and perceiving that he enjoyed having made
this trifling gain, he returned to the shop, and saying, "the man lives
for you, pay him what you owe," he passed four denarii into the
shop through the crack of the closed door, and let them fall inside,
punishing himself for his unconscionable greediness that he might not
form the habit of appropriating that which is not his own.
XXII. If you owe anything, seek for some one to whom you may repay it,
and if no one demands it, dun your own self; whether the man be good
or bad is no concern of yours; repay him, and then blame him. You have
forgotten, how your several duties are divided: it is right for him to
forget it, but we have bidden you bear it in mind. When, however, we
say that he who bestows a benefit ought to forget it, it is a mistake to
suppose that we rob him of all recollection of the business, though it
is most creditable to him; some of our precepts are stated over strictly
in order to reduce them to their true proportions. When we say that he
ought not to remember it, we mean he ought not to speak publicly, or
boast of it offensively. There are some, who, when they have bestowed
a benefit, tell it in all societies, talk of it when sober, cannot be
silent about it when drunk, force it upon strangers, and communicate it
to friends; it is to quell this excessive and reproachful consciousness
that we bid him who gave it forget it, and by commanding him to do this,
which is more than he is able, encourage him to keep silence.
XXIII. When you distrust those whom you order to do anything, you ought
to command them to do more than enough in order that they may do what
is enough. The purpose of all exaggeration is to arrive at the truth by
falsehood. Consequently, he who spoke of horses as being:
"Whiter than snows and swifter than the winds,"
said what could not possibly be in order that they might be thought to
be as much so as possible. And he who said:
"More firm than crags, more headlong than the stream,"
did not suppose that he should make any one believe that a man could
ever be as firm as a crag. Exaggeration never hopes all its daring
flights to be believed, but affirms what is incredible, that thereby it
may convey what is credible. When we say, "let the man who has bestowed
a benefit, forget it," what we mean is, "let him be as though he had
forgotten it; let not his remembrance of it appear or be seen." When
we say that repayment of a benefit ought not to be demanded, we do not