L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
you do not wish to be under an obligation; whereas it is most delightful
to receive a benefit from one whom you can love even after he has
wronged you, and when the pleasure which you feel in his friendship is
justified by the grounds on which it is based. Nothing is more wretched
for a modest and honourable man than to feel it to be his duty to love
one whom it does not please him to love. I must constantly remind you
that I do not speak of wise men, who take pleasure in everything that is
their duty, who have their feelings under command, and are able to lay
down whatever law they please to themselves and keep it, but that I
speak of imperfect beings struggling to follow the right path, who often
have trouble in bending their passions to their will. I must therefore
choose the man from whom I will accept a benefit; indeed, I ought to be
more careful in the choice of my creditor for a benefit than for money;
for I have only to pay the latter as much as I received of him, land
when I have paid it I am free from all obligation; but to the other I
must both repay more, and even when I have repaid his kindness we remain
connected, for when I have paid my debt I ought again to renew it,
while our friendship endures unbroken. Thus, as I ought not to make an
unworthy man my friend, so I ought not to admit an unworthy man into
that most holy bond of gratitude for benefits, from which friendship
arises. You reply, "I cannot always say 'No': sometimes I must receive a
benefit even against my will. Suppose I were given something by a cruel
and easily offended tyrant, who would take it as an affront if his
bounty were slighted? am I not to accept it? Suppose it were offered by
a pirate, or a brigand, or a king of the temper of a pirate or brigand.
What ought I to do? Such a man is not a worthy object for me to owe a
benefit to." When I say that you ought to choose, I except vis major
and fear, which destroy all power of choice. If you are free, if it lies
with you to decide whether you will or not, then you will turn over in
your own mind whether you will take a gift from a man or not; but if
your position makes it impossible for you to choose, then be assured
that you do not receive a gift, you merely obey orders. No one incurs
any obligation by receiving what it was not in his power to refuse; if
you want to know whether I wish to take it, arrange matters so that I
have the power of saying 'No.' "Yet suppose he gave you your life." It
does not matter what the gift was, unless it be given and received with
good will: you are not my preserver because you have saved my life.
Poison sometimes acts as a medicine, yet it is not on that account
regarded as wholesome. Some things benefit us but put us under no
obligation: for instance a man who intended to kill a tyrant, cut with
his sword a tumour from which he suffered: yet the tyrant did not show
him gratitude because by wounding him he had healed a disease which
surgeons had feared to meddle with.
XIX. You see that the actual thing itself is not of much importance,
because it is not regarded as a benefit at all, if you do good when you
intended to do evil; in such a case the benefit is done by chance, the
man did harm. I have seen a lion in the amphitheatre, who recognized one
of the men who fought with wild beasts, who once had been his keeper,
and protected him against the attacks of the other animals. Are we,
then, to say that this assistance of the brute was a benefit? By no
means, because it did not intend to do it, and did not do it with kindly
intentions. You may class the lion and your tyrant together: each of
them saved a man's life, yet neither conferred a benefit. Because it is
not a benefit to be forced to receive one, neither is it a benefit to be
under an obligation to a man to whom we do not wish to be indebted. You
must first give me personal freedom of decision, and then your benefit.
XX. The question has been raised, whether Marcus Brutus ought to have
received his life from the hands of Julius Caesar, who, he had decided,
ought to be put to death.
As to the grounds upon which he put him to death, I shall discuss them
elsewhere; for to my mind, though he was in other respects a great man,
in this he seems to have been entirely wrong, and not to have followed
the maxims of the Stoic philosophy. He must either have feared the name
of "King," although a state thrives best under a good king, or he must
have hoped that liberty could exist in a state where some had so much to
gain by reigning, and others had so much to gain by becoming slaves. Or,
again, he must have supposed that it would be possible to restore the
ancient constitution after all the ancient manners had been lost, and
that citizens could continue to possess equal rights, or laws remain
inviolate, in a state in which he had seen so many thousands of men
fighting to decide, not whether they should be slaves or free, but which
master they should serve. How forgetful he seems to have been, both of
human nature and of the history of his own country, in supposing that
when one despot was destroyed another of the same temper would not take
his place, though, after so many kings had perished by lightning and the
sword, a Tarquin was found to reign! Yet Brutus did right in receiving
his life from Caesar, though he was not bound thereby to regard Caesar
as his father, since it was by a wrong that Caesar had come to be in a
position to bestow this benefit. A man does not save your life who does
not kill you; nor does he confer a benefit, but merely gives you your
discharge. [The 'discharge' alluded to is that which was granted to
the beaten one of a pair of gladiators, when their duel was not to the
death.]
XXI. It seems to offer more opportunity for debate to consider what a
captive ought to do, if a man of abominable vices offers him the price
of his ransom? Shall I permit myself to be saved by a wretch? When safe,
what recompense can I make to him? Am I to live with an infamous person?
Yet, am I not to live with my preserver? I will tell you my opinion. I
would accept money, even from such a person, if it were to save my life;
yet I would only accept it as a loan, not as a benefit. I would repay
him the money, and if I were ever able to preserve him from danger I
would do so. As for friendship, which can only exist between equals, I
would not condescend to be such a man's friend; nor would I regard him
as my preserver, but merely as a money-lender, to whom I am only bound
to repay what I borrowed from him.
A man may be a worthy person for me to receive a benefit from, but it
will hurt him to give it. For this reason I will not receive it, because
he is ready to help me to his own prejudice, or even danger. Suppose
that he is willing to plead for me in court, but by so doing will make
the king his enemy. I should be his enemy, if, when he is willing to
risk himself for me, if I were not to risk myself without him, which
moreover is easier for me to do.
As an instance of this, Hecaton calls the case of Arcesilaus silly, and
not to the purpose. Arcesilaus, he says, refused to receive a large sum
of money which was offered to him by a son, lest the son should offend
his penurious father. What did he do deserving of praise, in not
receiving stolen goods, in choosing not to receive them, instead of
returning them? What proof of self-restraint is there in refusing to
receive another man's property. If you want an instance of magnanimity,
take the case of Julius Graecinus, whom Caius Caesar put to death merely
on the ground that he was a better man than it suited a tyrant for
anyone to be. This man, when he was receiving subscriptions from many of
his friends to cover his expenses in exhibiting public games, would not
receive a large sum which was sent him by Fabius Persicus; and when he
was blamed for rejecting it by those who think more of what is given
than of who gives it, he answered, "Am I to accept a present from a man
when I would not accept his offer to drink a glass of wine with him?"
When a consular named Rebilius, a man of equally bad character, sent
a yet larger sum to Graecinus, and pressed him to receive it. "I must
beg," answered he, "that you will excuse me. I did not take money from
Persicus either." Ought we to call this receiving presents, or rather
taking one's pick of the senate?
XXII. When we have decided to accept, let us accept with cheerfulness,
showing pleasure, and letting the giver see it, so that he may at once
receive some return for his goodness: for as it is a good reason for
rejoicing to see our friend happy, it is a better one to have made
him so. Let us, therefore, show how acceptable a gift is by loudly
expressing our gratitude for it; and let us do so, not only in the
hearing of the giver, but everywhere. He who receives a benefit with
gratitude, repays the first instalment of it.
XXIII. There are some, who only like to receive benefits privately: they
dislike having any witnesses and confidants. Such men, we may believe,
have no good intentions. As a giver is justified in dwelling upon those
qualities of his gift which will please the receiver, so a man, when he
receives, should do so publicly; you should not take from a man what
you are ashamed to owe him. Some return thanks to one stealthily, in a
corner, in a whisper. This is not modesty, but a kind of denying of the
debt: it is the part of an ungrateful man not to express his gratitude
before witnesses. Some object to any accounts being kept between them
and their benefactors, and wish no brokers to be employed or witnesses
to be called, but merely to give their own signature to a receipt. Those
men do the like, who take care to let as few persons as possible know
of the benefits which they have received. They fear to receive them in
public, in order that their success may be attributed rather to their
own talents than to the help of others: they are very seldom to be
found in attendance upon those to whom they owe their lives and their
fortunes, and thus, while avoiding the imputation of servility, they
incur that of ingratitude.
XXIV. Some men speak in the most offensive terms of those to whom they
owe most. There are men whom it is safer to affront than to serve,
for their dislike leads them to assume the airs of persons who are not
indebted to us: although nothing more is expected of them than that they
should remember what they owe us, refreshing their memory from time to
time, because no one can be grateful who forgets a kindness, and he
who remembers it, by so doing proves his gratitude. We ought neither to
receive benefits with a fastidious air, nor yet with a slavish humility:
for if a man does not care for a benefit when it is freshly bestowed--a
time at which all presents please us most--what will he do when its
first charms have gone off? Others receive with an air of disdain, as
much as to say. "I do not want it; but as you wish it so very much, I
will allow you to give it to me." Others take benefits languidly, and
leave the giver in doubt as to whether they know that they have received
them; others barely open their lips in thanks, and would be less
offensive if they said nothing. One ought to proportion one's thanks
to the importance of the benefit received, and to use the phrases, "You
have laid more of us than you think under an obligation," for everyone
likes to find his good actions extend further than he expected. "You do
not know what it is that you have done for me; but you ought to know
how much more important it is than you imagine." It is in itself
an expression of gratitude to speak of one's self as overwhelmed by
kindness; or "I shall never be able to thank you sufficiently; but, at
any rate, I will never cease to express everywhere my inability to thank
you."