As with all his works, Seneca addressed On Benefits to a single friend or family member—in this case, a man named Aebutius Liberalis, about whom almost nothing is known. Perhaps his name, which includes the word liberalis, “generous,” partly explains why Seneca directed this essay to him. In any case, the idea of a single addressee is largely a fictional conceit, as Seneca clearly wanted to be read widely by the general public.
Seneca begins his discussion of giving and receiving with a loose collection of introductory thoughts, many of which touch on his central themes: giving is not like lending, since no return should be expected or demanded; gratitude is essential, but ingratitude should be pardoned; intention and attitude are central aspects of generosity; we should emulate the gods in our open-handedness. After this sweeping overview, Seneca gets down to a more rigorous set of teachings in chapter 5 (p. 177).
[1.1]1 Among many and various mistakes made by those who live heedlessly and recklessly, my most excellent Liberalis, I can name few things more egregious than this: We don’t know how to give and receive. The result is that the gifts we have given badly become total losses. By the time we complain about not being repaid, it’s too late; they were already lost at the moment they were given. And it’s hardly a surprise that among all our greatest and most numerous vices, none are more common than those that arise from an ungrateful heart.2 The causes of this, as I see it, are multiple.
First, we don’t select worthy recipients when we give. By contrast, when we set out to lend,3 we look into the estate and lifestyle of the borrower; when planting, we don’t scatter seeds onto worn-out, sterile soil. Yet we strew our gifts without any discernment, rather than give them.
I couldn’t easily say whether it’s worse to reject what one has received or demand back what one has given. The nature of this kind of transaction is that we must accept only that which is freely offered. A bankruptcy is shameful if one seeks to clear one’s accounts only by financial means and not by good intent. It’s those who feel indebted who’ve repaid.
The fault lies not only in those who won’t even admit to a sense of gratitude, but also in ourselves. We find many ingrates, but we make more; we are sometimes harshly demanding and critical, sometimes flighty and regretful of our gift just after we give it, sometimes quarrelsome and prone to pick fights over tiny things. Thus, we ruin all sense of gratitude, not just after we give but even while we are giving.
Who among us was ever content to respond to a request made casually or only once? Who, when supposing that something was being asked of him, did not knit the brow, turn away the face, pretend to be busy, and, with long conversations that strive never to find an end, deprive the asker of the chance to make a request, dodging pressing needs by diverse ploys? Or, when backed into a corner, who did not delay (which is only a cowardly form of refusal), or promise to do it, but grudgingly, with furrowed brow, with bitter words barely forced out between clenched teeth? But no one willingly repays what was not received but extorted.
Can anyone be grateful when facing one who haughtily did him a favor or tossed him a gift, or angrily shoved it at him, or gave it wearily, simply to be rid of the bother? It’s wrong to think that someone’s going to give back after being worn down by delay and tortured by anticipation. Gifts and good deeds are returned in the same spirit in which they’re given, and so must not be given heedlessly. Those who get something given thoughtlessly think their debt is only to themselves. And gifts must not be given tardily: In every kind of service, we value the willingness of the giver, and those who delay will seem to be unwilling.
Gifts and good deeds must not be given with an edge of insult. It’s a pattern in human nature that injuries get deeper under our skin than boons; they take hold in our memory, while boons flow quickly away. What can we expect if we give offense while doing a good turn? Merely to be pardoned for such a gift would be gratitude enough.
[1.1.9] But the sheer proliferation of ingrates should not make us slow to be generous. First, as I said, we increase their number. Second, not even the immortal gods themselves are deterred from abundant and unceasing kindness by the impious people who neglect them. They follow their own natures; they give aid to all, even to those who are bad interpreters of their gifts. Let’s follow their lead, insofar as our human obtuseness allows. Let’s give, not lend out for profit. Those who think when they give about what they will get in return deserve to be cheated of that return.
“But let’s say things turn out poorly.”4 Our children and our spouses have often disappointed us, yet we still marry and raise them. Indeed, we’re so stubbornly tenacious, in defiance of experience, that we go back to war after a defeat or to the sea after a shipwreck. How much more fitting then to stay the course in giving!
If someone doesn’t give because he didn’t receive, then he only gave in order to receive; he supplies the ingrates—whose vice is to avoid giving back whenever possible—with just cause. How many are unworthy of the sunshine, yet the day still dawns! How many complain of being born into this world—yet Nature begets a new generation, and brings into being the same people who would prefer not to have been.
Here’s the mark of great and good hearts: To seek good deeds for their own sake, not for the profits that flow from them, and to look for good people even after meeting bad ones. What magnificence would there be in doing good for many, if none of them ever took advantage?
[1.2.3] Accountancy of good deeds is a simple matter: A certain amount is dispensed; if anything comes back, that’s a profit, but if not, it’s no loss. I gave for the purpose of giving. No one writes down good deeds on a ledger or calls them in by day and hour like a greedy collection agent. A good person never thinks of them, unless reminded by the one making return; to do otherwise is to make them into a loan. It’s a base kind of usury to treat a gift as an account payable. Whatever has happened in the case of prior gifts and good deeds, keep going, extend them to others. Better that these abide with the ungrateful, who might be made grateful at some point—by shame, by opportunity, or by imitation of their betters.
Don’t give up; carry through with your job, fulfill the part of a good person. Help this one with cash, that one with credit, another with influence, another with advice, another with healthful teachings. Even wild beasts can perceive the care of their keepers. No animal is so beyond taming that nurture does not soften it and turn it toward love of that which nurtures. Lions’ mouths are pulled open by their trainers without harm, and food brings the elephant’s wildness to slavish obedience; constant effort of devoted care wins over even those creatures who have no understanding or appreciation of the gifts. Someone’s ungrateful for today’s good deed? He won’t be for tomorrow’s. He forgot both? A third will call back the memory of those that have slipped away.
Those who are quick to think they have wasted good deeds will in fact waste them. But those who lean in, and add new good deeds to the first ones, will squeeze out gratitude from even a hard and oblivious heart. The beneficiaries won’t dare to lift their eyes in the face of so many good deeds; wherever they turn to escape their awareness, let them see you standing there. Besiege them with benefits.
[1.5] I must now explain the first of the things we have to learn—namely, what it is that we owe when someone’s given to us. Some think they owe the money they’ve received; others, the political office; others, the priesthood; others, the province. But these are only the markers of giving, not the gifts themselves. Gifts and good deeds can’t be touched by the hand; they’re enacted in the mind. Between the product of giving and the gift itself lies a huge gulf. The gift is not the gold, or the silver, or any of those things we think most important; it’s the very intent of the one who gives.
It’s the ignorant who take note only of those things that meet their eyes, that can be passed down and owned, while giving little weight to that which is in fact dear and precious. The things we hold in our hands and see with our eyes, the things our desire fastens on, are frail; both Fortune and human wrongs can take them away. But a gift or good deed endures, even after the object, the vehicle through which it was given,5 has perished. It’s a virtuous act. No power can render it meaningless.
[1.6] What then are gifts and good deeds? They’re generous acts, done in an eager and voluntary spirit, that bring joy, and also reap joy, from the act of giving. It doesn’t matter what’s done or given, but the attitude, since the gift is not the thing done or given, but lies in the heart of the one who does or gives. You can understand the huge difference between these things from this: A gift or good deed is certainly good, but the thing that’s given or done is neither good nor bad. It’s the heart that elevates little things, brightens dingy things, or casts into dishonor what’s thought to be great and valuable. The objects of our yearning are in themselves neutral, neither good nor bad in essence. It matters in what direction the Guiding Principle, from which things take their form, directs them. The gift is not the thing counted or handed over, just as it’s not the sacrificial animals, even if they’re fat and gleaming with gold, that form the honor paid to the gods, but rather the righteous and pious intent of worshipers. The good fulfill religious duties with grain or a bowl of meal; the bad cannot flee impiety, though they spill buckets of blood on the altars with their sacrifices.
If gifts and good deeds consisted in things rather than in the intent to do them, they’d be greater in proportion to the size of what we receive. But it’s not so. Often the ones who put us more in their debt are those who gave little but with a great spirit, who “in their heart made their wealth like that of kings,”6 who handed out a small amount but did so gladly, who forgot their own poverty while showing concern for mine, who had not only the intention but the desire to lend help, who felt that they got a gift when they gave one, who gave it with no thought of ever getting it back, or who got it back with no thought of ever having given it, who both sought out, then grabbed, the chance to help. Conversely, those “gifts” are in fact ungenerous, even if they seem great in appearance and substance, if they were either wrung from the givers or dropped thoughtlessly. More welcome by far is what comes not from a full but a willing hand. “They gave me only a little, but they were not able to give more. What he gave was huge, but he took his time, delayed, and when he gave, he sighed; he gave it in a superior manner, he spread the word of his gift, and did not seek to please the one to whom he gave. His gift was not to me, but to his own ostentation.”
[1.11] Let’s take this topic next: What gifts should be given, and how? First, let’s give what’s needed; then, what’s useful; third, what’s pleasing, especially things that will endure. We must begin however with what’s needed, for we conceive differently of things that preserve life than of those that embellish it or provide for it. Things that we can easily do without, we can size up with a discriminating eye, and can say about them: “Take it back, I don’t want it; I’m content with what I have.” (Sometimes it’s pleasing not only to give back but also to toss far from you the things you’ve received.)
From the things that are necessary, top priority goes to those without which we can’t live; second, to those without which we ought not; third, [to] those without which we wouldn’t want to. The first category includes things of this sort: being rescued from the hands of enemies, or from the wrath of a despot, or from proscription,7 or from other dangers, varied and obscure, that assail human life. [1.11.4] The second includes things without which we can survive, but in such a way that death would be preferable, such as freedom, virtue, and a sound mind. Next are the things that we hold dear by reason of closeness, blood relation, familiarity, and long-standing custom, such as children, spouses, household gods, and other things to which the heart is so attached that we’d regard it as more grave to be separated from these than from life.
Next come the useful things, diverse and wide-ranging in their content. Here we’ll place money—not in excess, but enough for a healthful way of life; here, honor, and advancement toward higher station (for those who strive in that direction), since nothing is more useful than to become useful to oneself.
The gifts and good deeds that remain come out of an overflowing prosperity, such as makes people spoiled. In this category, we’ll seek to make our gifts pleasing by timely presentation and by avoiding the commonplace, by giving things that few people own (few at least in this era or in this manner), or things that may not be precious in themselves but become so because of the time, or place, they were given.
We should think about what we can give that will bring most pleasure in future, what the owners will often bump into so that we’ll be in their thoughts every time they’re in its presence. We’ll at least be careful not to send any useless gifts, such as hunting gear to a woman8 or an old man, or books to a simpleton, or nets9 to a scholar immersed in studies. On the other hand, we’ll take equal care, if we want to send pleasing things, not to send something that will rebuke a person’s failings, such as wine to a drunkard, or medicines to the sickly. If it acknowledges a vice of the recipient, it starts to be a curse and not a gift.
In the second book of On Benefits, Seneca expands on the point made in book 1, that the attitude with which one gives is far more important than the gift itself. He extends this idea to include receiving as well as giving, commencing a long inquiry, continuing throughout the work, into the importance of gratitude.
[2.1] Let us give in the same spirit with which we would want to receive—above all, generously, promptly, with no hesitation.
There’s no gratitude incurred by a gift that sticks for a long time to the hands of the giver, or that someone seems pained to let go of and gives as if tearing it away. Even if some delay intervenes, let’s by all means avoid seeming to think things over. The one who hesitates is nearly refusing, and does not earn any gratitude. Since the intention of the person giving is the most pleasant part of the gift, and since the giver reveals by hesitation an unwillingness to give, he didn’t make a gift so much as lose a battle with someone drawing it out of him. Many indeed are generous only when weakness makes them submissive.
It’s the gifts and good deeds standing in readiness that are most pleasing, the easy and voluntary ones, where no delay is seen except through the modesty of the receiver. It’s best to anticipate what each person wants; next best, to gratify the desire. It’s better to go right ahead and not wait to be asked. Righteous people purse their lips and blush all over in order to make a request; whoever spares them this travail multiplies the good deed. [2.2] The words “I ask” are vexing and burdensome, to be spoken with a downcast face. A friend, or whomever you will make your friend by doing a good turn, must be relieved of having to say them. However fast we move, we give too late if we give on request.
[2.4] But there are many who drag their giving into hatefulness by the harshness of their words and their arrogance, employing such speech and such contempt that we regret obtaining our object. The thing is promised, and then delays intervene. Nothing is more unpleasant than when what you’ve “gotten” has to be asked for. Gifts and good deeds should be given and done on the spot; some find it’s harder to get hold of them in fact than in promise. A third party must be sought to send a reminder and a fourth to close the deal. Thus, a single gift gets worn away as it passes through many hands. As a result, the one who made the promise gets only a tiny portion of gratitude, since each intermediary takes a cut. If you want your gifts to be appreciated, take care of this: that they pass whole and undiminished to those to whom you’ve promised, without any commission (so to speak) taken out.
[2.5] Nothing is so bitter as to be kept dangling a long time. Some can more easily endure having their hopes dashed than having them drawn out at length. Yet many share this fault—postponement of promises—through their warped aspiration of having a huge crowd of petitioners. That’s how the attendants of royal power behave,10 those who delight in long demonstrations of superiority; they think they have less power if they don’t display that power to each person in turn, often and at length. They do nothing promptly or conclusively; they harm at top speed but benefit slowly. [2.5.2] That’s where we get those shouts voiced by righteous anger: “Do it already, if you’re doing anything!” and “Nothing is worth this; I’d rather you said no!” When the heart, fatigued, begins to hate the good turn it waits for, can it ever feel gratitude?
[2.5.4] All generosity is speedy. It’s natural to one who does something gladly to do it quickly. Whoever gives aid slowly, dragging it out from one day to the next, doesn’t give it from the heart. That person loses the two greatest things, time, and the demonstration of friendly intent. Wanting slowly is the sign of not wanting.
Seneca often cites quips or anecdotes from historical figures to make his points, as in the following passage, where he invokes Fabius Maximus (here called Fabius Verrucosus), a hero of Rome’s wars against Carthage (centuries before his own time).
[2.6.2] How sweet and precious is the gift given by one who won’t allow any thanks, or who forgets, even as he gives, that he has given! But to carp at a person just as you give something is madness; it mixes reproach with kindness. Gifts and good deeds must not be made bitter or mixed with anything unpleasant. Choose a different occasion if there’s anything you want to reprove. Fabius Verrucosus used to compare a gift given in harsh manner by a stern donor to a loaf of bread with stone grit in it; if one is starving, one must accept it, but it’s a bitter meal.
Seneca’s ethical code demands that the giver abandon all thought of gain, including, as explained in the following, any public acknowledgment of the gift. Seneca would greatly approve the custom of modern-day philanthropists who have their gifts attributed to “anonymous.”
[2.10] Sometimes those being helped must even be deceived, so that they’re not able to know from whom they benefited. It is said that Arcesilaus11 thought it best to give aid in secret to his friend, a poor man who concealed his poverty, who was moreover ill but did not admit this either, who lacked the means to pay for his needs. Arcesilaus snuck a small purse under the man’s pillow without his knowledge. That way the man, who was so pointlessly self-effacing, might find what he needed rather than receive it. “What?” you ask. “He won’t know from whom he got it?” Yes, let him not know, if not knowing is part of the gift he receives. Then I’ll do much else, I’ll give much, so that from those other deeds he’ll understand who did the first one. In the end, he won’t know he got something, but I’ll know that I gave.
“That’s not enough,” you say. No, it’s not, if you plan to lend at interest. If you plan to give, then you’ll give, in whatever way will most benefit the one who receives. You’ll be content to have yourself as a witness. Otherwise, it’s not good deeds that gratify you but the appearance of doing them. “But I want him to know, at least!” You’re seeking a debtor. “I want him at least to know!” What’s that? If it’s better for him not to know, more honorable and more gracious, won’t you change your opinion? “I want him to know!” So then, you won’t save a man in the dark?
Of course, when occasion allows, we must have regard for the joy that comes from the eagerness of the recipient; I don’t deny that. But if our assistance brings shame despite being called for, if our assistance offends unless concealed, then I won’t publish my gift or good deed in the newspapers.12 Of course not! I’m not going to let on that I was the giver. It’s a teaching of prime importance and greatest necessity that I must not make reproaches or even reminders. Between two partners in giving, there is this law: The one should forget right away the giving of a gift, the other should never forget receiving it.
Frequent mention of our good deeds wounds and oppresses the heart. It makes people want to shout, like the man saved from the triumvirs’ proscription13 by a certain friend of Caesar, when he could no longer bear his rescuer’s arrogance: “Give me back to Caesar!” For how long will you keep saying, “I’m the one who saved you, I snatched you from doom!”? If I remember it on my own account, it’s life you gave; if on yours, it’s death. I owe you nothing, if you only saved me to have someone to show off. For how long will you exhibit me? For how long will you prevent me from forgetting my bad luck? In a triumphal parade, I would only have marched a single time!14 There should be no talk of what we have given. Those who give reminders are looking to be paid back. Don’t harp on it, don’t call it back to mind—unless you evoke an earlier gift by making a new one!
We shouldn’t even tell others. Let the one who gave keep quiet; the one who got should tell. Or else you’ll be told what was said to that man who always bragged of what he gave. “You can’t say you didn’t get it back!” said the one who received it. “When?” “Often enough, and in many places: Wherever and whenever you described it!” Why do you need to speak of it, to take over the other person’s job? There’s someone who can do this more honorably, and whose narration will offer this new cause for praise: the fact that you’re not narrating. You’re taking me for an ingrate if, in your eyes, no one will know of your gift unless you tell them!
[2.11.4] Total humaneness must accompany our gifts. A farmer will lose his crop if he only sows the seed and then stops work. It takes lots of effort to bring what is sown into ripeness. Nothing comes to fruition unless continuously cared for from its first stage to its last. It’s the same with gifts and good deeds. Can there be among these anything greater than the things a father gives to his children? Yet these lead nowhere if they cease in infancy, if an enduring sense of duty does not nourish the initial gift. Other gifts follow the same rule: If you don’t support them, you’ll lose them. It’s not enough to have given; you must nurture them too. If you want to make your debtors grateful, you must not only give but love what you give as well.
Most of all, as I’ve said, let’s go easy on people’s ears. Reminders give rise to irritation; reproaches, to hatred. A superior attitude in giving must be avoided above all. What need of an arrogant face or puffed-up speech? The act itself elevates you. Away with vain display. Our deeds will speak while we keep silent. A gift given in a superior way incurs not only ingratitude but dislike too.
[2.13] Haughty pride! Most foolish of great Fortune’s evils! How pleasing if we get nothing from you! How you turn every gift, every good deed, into injury! How badly all things reflect on you! The higher you raise yourself, the lower you sink. You show that you were not entitled to claim those good things that make you so puffed up. Whatever you give, you ruin. I’d like to ask why pride sticks its nose in the air, why it so distorts its features and expression as to prefer a mask to a face? It’s the things given with human visage, gentle and calm, that please, things that one higher than me did not hold over my head when giving, but rather stayed as kind as he could, came down to my level, stripped all ceremony away from his gift. [2.13.3] The only way to convince people not to let arrogance destroy their giving is to show them that the “greatness” of haughty pride is an empty sham. It diverts onto the path of hatred things that ought to be loved.
Some things though will cause harm to those who obtain them. In that case, it’s a good deed not to give them, but indeed to refuse them. We will need to assess what is useful for those who ask, rather than what is desired. Often, we yearn for harmful things, and we’re not able to discern how dangerous they are, since emotion gets in the way of judgment. But when yearning has subsided, when that impulse of a soul on fire, which drives out better counsel, has retreated, we hate those who sponsored our evil gifts and caused us harm. Just as we refuse chilled water15 to the sick, blades to those who are grief-stricken or enraged at themselves, and to the insane anything that their passion for self-destruction seeks, so we will persist in saying no to those who ask sincerely and humbly, sometimes even piteously, for things that will cause them harm. It’s proper to look not just to the starting points of the benefits, but to the endpoints, and to give things that will please them not just at the moment they get them, but long afterward.
Many people would say: “I know this won’t help him, but what can I do? He’s asking, and I can’t resist his entreaties. It’s his problem. He’ll have himself to blame, not me.” That’s wrong. He’ll blame you, and deservedly. When he returns to his right mind, when that passion that fired his brain has retreated, why wouldn’t he hate the one who helped him along toward his own loss and peril? You’d bestow a cruel kindness by destroying those whose wishes you grant. Just as it’s the most noble deed to save the lives even of those who don’t want to be saved, so it’s a kind of hatred, though a smooth and courteous one, to lavish poisons on those who seek them. Let’s give gifts that will continue to please as long as they’re in use, that will never turn into something bad. I won’t give money that I know will end up in the purse of an adulteress, nor will I join the company of those doing or planning wrong. If I can, I’ll pull these people back from their crimes, or if not, at the least I won’t help them.
[2.15.3] Each of us must consider our own resources and means, lest we give more, or less, than we’re able. Also, the quality of the person to whom we give must be examined. Some gifts are smaller than ought to issue from great people, while others are too large for the receiver. Compare the nature of both giver and receiver, and assess too the gift you will give, asking whether it’s too large or too small for the giver, and also whether the one on the receiving end will either disdain it or refuse to accept it.
Alexander the Great—a madman, whose mind conceived only on an enormous scale—was about to give a city to someone. When the man to whom he was giving it took his own measure and rejected the gift on the grounds that it would spur envy, saying it did not consort with his station, Alexander replied: “I’m not asking what’s fitting for you to get, but what’s fitting for me to give.” This seems to show spirit and royal bearing, though in fact it’s very stupid. Nothing is in itself a fitting gift for anyone. What matters is who gives it and to whom, where, why, when, and the other factors without which one cannot make a true accounting of the deed. Alexander—you most puffed-up of all creatures! [2.16.2] Grant that you could do this, that Fortune had so far elevated you that cities were your bequests (but how much greater the mind that would have refrained from seizing them, rather than from squandering them!); nonetheless, some people are too small for their pockets to contain a city!
A Cynic wise man once asked King Antigonus for a talent of silver.16 The king replied that this was more than a Cynic ought to request. Rebuffed, the man asked for a single denarius. Antigonus replied that this was less than a king ought to give. “But,” you say, “sophistry of that type is most ignoble. The king merely found a way to meet neither request. He considered the kingly role in the matter of the denarius, the Cynic role in that of the talent; he might have given a denarius to the man as a Cynic, and bestowed a talent in his own place as king. Though some gifts might be too large for a Cynic to receive, there’s nothing so small that the generosity of a king might not give it with honor.” If you want my opinion, though, I approve the king’s replies. It’s insupportable for someone who hates money to also ask for it. You’ve proclaimed a hatred of money; this is your creed, you’ve adopted this role; you must see it through. It’s outrageous for you to get rich under a guise of noble poverty.17 One must look to one’s own role in life not less than to that of the person one wants to help.
[2.17.3] I’ll use a comparison drawn from our Chrysippus,18 concerning a game of ball. If the ball falls to the ground, clearly either the thrower or the catcher is at fault. It stays on course when, as it passes through the hands of both, it’s skillfully thrown and caught by both. But a good ballplayer must throw differently depending on whether the other player is tall or short. It’s the same with gifts and good deeds. Unless they’re fitted to both characters, that of the giver and receiver, they won’t leave the hands of one, or arrive in those of the other, as they should. If our exchange is with a skilled and trained partner, we’ll throw the ball more boldly; however it travels, a skilled and unencumbered hand will return it. But if our partner is new to the game and untrained, we won’t throw so stiffly or so strongly but more gently, running forward to direct the ball in a relaxed way into his very hand. The same must be done in the case of gifts and good deeds. We ought to be teachers some of the time, and deem it sufficient if our students make an effort, or take a chance, or show their willingness. Rather, we make others ungrateful, or encourage them when they are so, as though our gifts would be great only if adequate thanks were not possible!
[2.17.6] There are many, the arrogant and the self-congratulating, whose natures are so warped that they’d rather lose what they’ve given than be seen taking repayment. How much better, how much more humane, to let recipients too play their parts, to nurture their means of showing gratitude, to put a good interpretation on everything, to hear expressions of thanks as though they were repayments, and to show such a lack of concern as to want the debtor to be released from obligation! The moneylender who makes harsh demands on clients gets a bad reputation, as does the one who’s slow to accept payoffs and stubbornly finds reasons to delay. But gifts are different; repaying them is just as crucial as not demanding repayment. The best sort of person gives freely, never makes demands, is delighted by returns, forgets what was given (honestly and truly), and takes payback in the spirit of one accepting a gift.
Having covered many aspects of giving, Seneca turns also to the topic of how one should receive gifts.
[2.18.1] Now let’s pass over to the other side of our topic—namely, how people ought to behave when they accept gifts or good deeds.
[2.18.2] The first lesson Reason offers is that we must not accept them from everyone. From whom then? Let me reply in brief: from those to whom we would have given. Let’s look carefully, for it takes greater discernment to find a creditor than a borrower. Besides other problems (for many indeed arise), it’s a serious torment to owe someone you don’t want to owe. On the other hand, it’s most pleasant to accept a good turn from those whom you’d be able to adore even after they did you wrong. [2.18.5] I need to choose whom to receive a boon from, and I need to choose the lender of a boon more carefully than a lender of money. To the moneylender I need only pay back what I borrowed, and once I’ve done that, I’m free and clear. But to the giver of a boon I must give back even more, and once I’ve done so, we remain connected nonetheless.
[2.22] Once we’ve made the choice to accept, we should do so cheerfully, expressing our joy in a way that the givers can’t miss, so they’ll get an immediate reward. It’s a righteous source of happiness to see a friend made happy, and even more righteous to have made him so. [2.23] But some prefer not to accept a gift unless in secret; they avoid having anyone witness or know what’s going on. These, you must know, have the wrong frame of mind. . . . Don’t accept what you’re embarrassed to owe! Some people give thanks on the sly, in a corner, whispering in the ear. This isn’t shyness, but a kind of rejection. It’s ungrateful to give thanks only after witnesses have left the room.
[2.24.2] We must not accept in a fussy way, nor abjectly and humbly; for if someone accepts indifferently, though the whole benefit stands newly before his eyes, what will he do after that initial delight has grown cold? Some people accept haughtily, saying: “I don’t need it, but since you’re so eager, I’ll go along with your wishes.” Others accept passively, so as to leave the giver in doubt as to whether they even perceived it. Still others barely open their mouths, behaving less gratefully than if they’d just kept silent.
The intensity of our thanks should match the scale of the gift. Things like this should be added: “You’ve made more people than you know beholden to you” (for everyone rejoices in a benefit that is known far and wide); “You don’t know what you’ve given me, but you ought to know how much more it is than you imagine” (those who put themselves in debt show their gratitude straight off); “I’ll never be able to repay you; but I won’t stop proclaiming everywhere that I can’t repay you.” [2.25.2] Let’s use these words and others like them, so our intention won’t be hidden but radiant and open. The words may come up short, but if we’re moved in the way we ought to be, our awareness will show in our faces.
Seneca is deeply concerned in On Benefits with ingratitude, a failing that, he argues at one point, threatens the very fabric of society. He debates at length (in a section not included here) whether ingratitude should be considered a crime and punished accordingly, ultimately deciding it should not be. In the following sections, he analyzes the causes of ingratitude, then moves to a consideration of the gratitude we all owe, as human beings, to Nature and to the gods.
[2.26] Now, we must examine what it is that mostly makes people ungrateful. What makes them so is either too great regard for the self, and the flaw entrenched in the mortal condition—admiring oneself and one’s deeds; or, greediness; or, jealousy. Let’s begin with the first of these causes.
All people judge themselves generously. That leads them to believe that they deserve everything, to accept gifts as though receiving payments, and to consider their worth undervalued. “He gave me this,” they say, “but how tardily, after how many travails! How much more I could have attained, had I preferred the patronage of him, or him, or my own! I hadn’t looked for this: I’ve been tossed in with the common herd. Does he think me worth so little? It would have been more honorable had I been ignored.”
[2.27.3] Second, it’s greed that prevents people from feeling grateful. What’s been given never lives up to our wanton hopes. We want more the more has come our way. Greed becomes much more virulent when focused on collecting great wealth, just as the strength of a flame becomes immeasurably fiercer, the greater the blaze from which it leaps forth.
Similarly, ambition won’t let us rest content with our quantity of honors, even if that amount meets what we once, immodestly, wished for. We give no thanks for a tribuneship, but instead complain that we weren’t advanced to the praetorship; and this won’t do, if there’s no consulship; and not even a consulship satisfies, if there’s only one.19 Greed keeps reaching ever farther, not comprehending its own happiness, since it looks only to where it’s heading, not where it came from.
[2.28] Then there’s jealousy, an evil more powerful and insistent than all these. It deranges us with comparisons: “He gave to me, but gave more to him, and gave sooner to him.” Jealousy never speaks on behalf of another, but promotes its own cause ahead of all. How much simpler and more sensible to mentally enlarge the gift that was received, on the understanding that we are not valued as highly by others as by ourselves. “I should have gotten more, but it wasn’t easy for him to give more; his generosity had to be channeled in many directions; this is just a start, so let’s be of good cheer and, by accepting this gratefully, let’s call forth his better nature; he did too little, but there are more occasions ahead; he advanced that one ahead of me, but me ahead of many; that one does not come up to my level in virtues or in services, but he has his own charms; I won’t get to a place of deserving greater things if I complain, but rather, I’ll seem undeserving of what’s been given. So he gave more to those worthless people, so what? Fortune rarely acts the judge! We complain every day that evil men are fortunate; often a hailstorm passes over the garden plots of the worst sort of people, and smashes the crops of the best; each of us endures our own destiny, in friendship as in other things.” There’s no gift so generous that ill-will can’t tear it down, and there’s none so tiny that a generous interpreter can’t make it bigger. You’ll never lack reasons to complain if you examine gifts with a jaundiced eye.
Just look! How even those who claim wisdom are unfair assessors of the gifts of the gods. They complain that we’re bested by elephants in size of our bodies, by deer in swiftness, by birds in lightness, by bulls in forcefulness; that wild animals have thick hides—the deer’s more lovely, the bear’s shaggier, the beaver’s softer; that dogs surpass us in keenness of scent, eagles in sharpness of sight, crows in lifespan, and many animals in the ability to swim. And they call it an injury that humankind is not made up of various and incompatible virtues (even though Nature does not permit certain qualities to co-exist in the same creature, such as speed and physical strength), and they say the gods neglect us because they didn’t give us good health that can’t be damaged by our bad behaviors, or knowledge of the future. They barely refrain from going to such a pitch of insolence that they come to hate Nature, because we’re lower than the gods, because we don’t stand on their level. How much more gratifying to turn to the contemplation of so many and such great gifts, and to give thanks, that the gods wanted us to have second place to theirs in this most beautiful dwelling place, that they put us in charge of the world! Is there any comparison between us and those animals over which we have complete power? Whatever has been denied to us was something that couldn’t be given.
Whoever you are who so unfairly assess the lot of humanity: Consider how many gifts our parent20 has given us, how much more powerful than us are the creatures we have put under the yoke, how much faster those we chase and catch, how there’s nothing that lives that we can’t subdue with might. We’ve received so many strengths, so many crafts, and ultimately, the mind, which can journey to any place it aims in a moment, which is swifter than the stars—indeed it runs on ahead of the courses those stars will follow ages later; so many fruits, so much wealth, such a store of other resources heaped up on top of still others. Go ahead, look around everywhere, take the individual attributes from all creatures that you’d wish had been given to you; you won’t find anything you’d rather be. If you rightly assess the kindness of Nature, you must admit that you’re the apple of her eye.
Here’s the story: The immortal gods have held us most dear, and continue to do so. They have made us closest in station to themselves, the greatest honor that could be bestowed. We’ve gotten great things; we couldn’t manage greater.
I thought this message was needed, both because I had to speak a bit about the greatest benefits when discussing the smallest ones, and because the arrogance of this hateful vice, ingratitude, spreads into other arenas. To whom will those who scorn the highest gifts reply gratefully? What gift will they consider great or needful of recompense? In whose debt will they be for health or breath if they deny that their life is a gift from the gods, a gift they requisition every day?
Whoever teaches people to be grateful helps the causes of both humans and gods—the gods, who need nothing and who stand outside all desire, yet we can still render them our thanks. There’s no reason for anyone to use weakness or lack of resources to excuse an ungrateful mind, or to say: “What am I to do, and how to do it? When am I to return thanks to those higher beings, the lords of all things?” It’s easy to return a good deed. If you’re greedy, you can do it without expense; if you’re lazy, without effort: at the very instant you become obligated, if you wish it, you’ll have paid back any donor on equal terms. Whoever cheerfully accepts a gift or good deed, thereby returns it.
[2.33] Someone’s done me a good turn. I received it just as he wanted me to do. So he’s got what he sought, the only thing he sought, and so I’m grateful. Beyond this, he might get some advantage from me, something useful that comes from a grateful person, but this is not the remaining part of an incomplete duty—rather, it’s an extension beyond what’s already complete. If Phidias21 makes a statue, he gets one kind of profit from his art, another from what that art produces. His art lies in making what he wants; the product lies in making it for profit. Phidias has completed his work even if he did not sell it.
[2.34] “What then?” you say. “Has a person who does nothing shown gratitude?” That person did the most important thing: With his good attitude he did me a good turn, and did it on an equal footing, as befits friendship. Then too, there’s the fact that a benefit and a loan are repaid differently. There’s no need to expect me to display my repayment before you. The thing takes place between our minds.
[2.35.3] “Good things have been given to me, my good name has been protected, my ill-repute has been removed, my life has been saved, along with my freedom, which is more precious than life. And how will I be able to show my gratitude? When will that day arrive, on which I can reveal to him my heart?” That day is here—the one on which he showed you his! Accept the good turn, embrace it, be glad—not because you’re getting it, but because you’re returning it, though you still will owe it. That way you won’t run the risk of this great mischance: a turn of events might make you ungrateful.
What I suggest is nothing difficult; I don’t want you to lose heart or grow weary from anticipating great efforts and long servitude. I’m not postponing your task to the future; it’s about the here and now. You’ll never be grateful if you are not grateful at once.
What will you do? Not take up weapons, though maybe someday that will be needed. Not cross the oceans, though maybe someday you’ll sail before menacing winds. You want to repay a good turn? Accept it with kindness. You’ve shown gratitude, not so that you’ll think you’re free of debt, but so that your debt will be more free of worries.
In book 3, Seneca continues his discussion of ingratitude, what causes it and how to combat it. After deciding it cannot be criminalized, he comes to the conclusion that ingrates punish themselves by cutting themselves off from the joy of generosity.
[3.1.3] Ingrates come in many varieties, just as thieves and murderers do; they share one crime, but there’s a great range of types. They’re ingrates if they deny that they got a gift; ingrates, if they conceal it; ingrates, if they make no return; the worst ingrates of all, if they forget. The ones who don’t repay at least still acknowledge the debt, and surely they retain some trace of the good deeds done for them, buried within their bad conscience; they might be turned back toward a show of gratitude by some cause or other, if shame spurs them on or the sudden impulse toward honorable behavior (the kind of thing that arises now and then even in evil hearts), or if a ready opportunity beckons. But the other sort can never become grateful, once the benefit they received has completely slipped away.
Which would you call worse: the one who feels no gratitude for a good deed, or the one who has no memory of it? It’s sickly eyes that shrink from daylight, but blind ones that don’t perceive it. Not to love one’s parents is impious, but to fail to recognize them—insane! [3.2.2] To repay a favor requires moral strength, time, resources, and the blessings of Fortune. But to remember it makes a person grateful enough, even without expense. Remembering requires no effort, nor wealth, nor success, so those who don’t do it have no excuse to hide behind.
[3.3] There are other factors that strip good deeds, sometimes even very great ones, from our minds, but the foremost and most influential is that we’re preoccupied by fresh desires and look to what we want, not what we have. Reaching out for the next acquisition makes the one in your home seem worthless. It follows that, if desire for new things makes what you’ve gotten seem trivial, the one who helped you get it won’t be appreciated. We adore and admire our benefactors, and declare that our entire condition is due to them, so long as the things we sought continue to please us. But then, the dazzle of other things bursts into our hearts, and our impulses rush toward them, in the way that people tend to move from great desires to even greater ones. Whatever we earlier called a gift or good deed gets immediately struck out of the record; we don’t look at the things that set us above other people, but only at the display Fortune makes in those who stand higher than we do.
No one can be both jealous and grateful at the same time. Jealousy belongs to the bitter and discontented, gratitude to the joyous. Then too, there’s the fact that all of us know only the moment that rushes past before us; only rarely do we turn our minds backward toward the past. Thus, our teachers, and the benefits they conferred, pass out of our minds once we have left childhood behind; thus, the things that nurtured our adolescence die away, for that stage of life never returns. We all file away that which was, not under “past,” but under “gone forever,” and memory grows feeble in those always bent on what’s to come.
[3.17] “What then?” you ask. “Will the ingrates go unpunished?” What indeed, I reply—Shall the irreverent go unpunished? The ill-tempered? The greedy? The reckless? The cruel? Do you really think that qualities we detest go unpunished, or do you judge any punishment more weighty than public hatred? This is punishment: not to dare to accept a gift or good deed from anyone, not to dare to give one, to be marked out by the eyes of all or to think oneself so marked out, to lose the apprehension of the best and sweetest thing. Or do you call someone unhappy who’s lost keenness of sight, or whose ears are blocked by infirmity, but not call wretched those who have lost the sensation of giving? They live in fear of the gods, who are witnesses of every ingratitude. The awareness of the giving from which they’re barred burns and chokes them. This punishment is great enough: not to taste the fruit of what, as I’ve said, is sweetest of all.
In book 4 of On Benefits, Seneca moves to the moral heart of his topic, the relationship between human generosity and the beneficence of the gods. As a Stoic, Seneca subscribed to the view that the gods—not conceived of primarily as Jupiter and his family, but as diffuse, amorphous beings or a single collective being (see 4.7)—are entirely benevolent, to the extent (not a very great one) they even care about human life. They are the forces that first set the cosmos in order and continue to keep it running smoothly. Because the world they have established holds many boons for humankind, Seneca regards them as models of selfless giving. This view is partly based on his dismissal (see 4.25) of the traditional notion that the gods delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices.
[4.1] Out of all the things we’ve taken up, Aebutius Liberalis, nothing can be thought more essential or more needful of careful expression (as Sallust says) than what is now before us: the question of whether giving a boon, and returning a favor in turn, should be pursued simply for its own sake.
We see some people who attend to honorable things only for the sake of gain, and who take no pleasure in virtue if it has no price tag—virtue, which has no trace of magnificence if it’s something to be bought and sold. What’s baser than for someone to count up how much a good man is worth, since virtue neither draws us on with gain nor scares us off with loss? . . . We must go toward her by treading expedience underfoot, and go wherever she calls or sends us, without looking to our own household, without any sparing of our blood; her power must never be disparaged. “What will I get then,” you say, “if I do this bravely and graciously?” Only this: the fact that you did it. Nothing else is promised to you.
[4.3.2] It’s not a gift or good deed if it looks toward an increase of fortune. Besides, if only expedience prompted us to help others, then those who can most easily do so would give least of all—the wealthy, the powerful, the monarchs, those who don’t need help from others. Not even the gods would bestow so many gifts, which in fact they heap on us day and night without ceasing. For their own nature suffices for all their needs, and renders them complete, and safe, beyond all harm. They will give nothing good to anyone, if the only reason for giving is to look out for oneself and one’s advantage. To look not for where you can best place your boon, but where you will get the most profit from it, and where you will most easily reap the reward—this is not giving, but investing.
[4.4.3] Who is so wretched and cast down, who so accursed by fate and born for trouble, as not to perceive the greatness of the generosity of the gods? Look around at those whiners who are always bemoaning their fortunes, and still you won’t find a one who has no share of heaven’s benefactions, no one who has not been touched by a drop from that kindliest of springs. Was it too little, then—that which was parceled out to us at birth on an equal basis? Never mind the goods that were later divided in uneven measure. Did Nature give too little when she gave us herself?
[4.5] “But god doesn’t give gifts or do good deeds,”22 you object. Then from where came those things you own, give, cling to, treasure, or steal? From where those countless delights of your eyes, ears, and mind? From where that bounty that furnishes our luxury—for we are not just provided with our needs, but loved as though we were sweethearts? So many trees, with their various fruits; so many medicinal plants; so many foodstuffs spread through each season, such that earth brings forth nurture at random for even the idler? Creatures of every species, some on dry, solid ground, some swimming in waters, some dropping through the firmament, so that every region of the natural world may pay us some tribute? Rivers that in one spot enfold the fields with most pleasant meanders, in another roll in a broad and navigable course that makes a road for trade? And among these, the ones that swell wondrously in summertime, such that a sudden rush of summer torrent irrigates the places exposed to burning skies? And what of the springs of healing waters? And the upsurge of warm currents upon our very shores?
[4.6] If someone were to give you a few acres, you’d say you had received a gift. Yet you refuse to call a gift the vast expanse of the earth’s lands, stretching out far and wide? If someone gives you money and—since you think this a big deal—fills your coin-chest, you’ll call it a boon. But god has placed so many precious metals, has drawn so many rivers from the ground, bearing gold as they flow through the soil; silver, copper, and iron, huge masses of them, buried in all places, and god has given you the ability to seek them out, and placed on earth’s surface the marks of the riches hidden beneath—yet you deny you’ve received a boon? If a house should be given to you, gleaming with marble, its ceiling shining with gold or spangled with colors,23 you’ll call it no ordinary favor. Yet god has built for you a huge dwelling, with no risk of fire or collapse, in which you’ll find, not cheap stone veneer, thinner than the saw-blade that cut it, but solid blocks of the most costly stone, and all of them variegated and complex, so that even a tiny piece inspires your awe, and a ceiling that glitters differently by night and by day—then do you deny you’ve received a favor? And though you place great value on these things you have, do you play the ingrate and suppose you are in no one’s debt? From where came this breath that you draw? From where this light by which you order and arrange the acts of your life? From where the blood that sustains the warmth of life with its flow? From where those foods that excite your palate with rare flavors, though you’re already full? From where those goads to worn-out pleasure-seeking? From where the quietude in which you languish and rot? Won’t you say, if you know gratitude, A god made this tranquility for us?24
It’s indeed a god, who has loosed not just a few cows, but vast herds, through the whole world, who provides fodder for the flocks as they roam everywhere, who has replaced summer pasturage with that of winter, who has taught not only the music of the pipe, and the shaping of rude and untrained song to some small measure of form, but has devised so many arts, such variety of vocal expression, so many sounds producing music. . . . You must not call these things we’ve invented “ours,” any more than you can call “ours” the fact that we grow.
[4.7] “But it’s nature that bestows these things on us,” someone says. Don’t you realize that when you say this, you’re merely swapping that name for “god”? For what else is Nature but god and divine reason, spread through the whole universe and all its parts? Whenever you wish, you can address the author of all our reality in some other way; you’ll be right to use the names “Jupiter” and “the Thunderer” and “the Supporter.” . . . Even if you use the name “Fate,” you won’t be off the mark, for Fate is only a connected sequence of causation, and god is the first cause of all things, on which other causes depend. Whatever names you choose, you’ll be right to apply them to this being if they convey a certain power and achievement of heavenly things. There can be as many names as the gifts that are bestowed.
[4.9] God gives us very many and very great gifts, without expectation of repayment, since god does not need a gift from us, nor can we give anything to god. Giving is something to be sought for its own sake. All that is looked for in it is the gain of the one who receives. Let’s move toward this, and put our own advantage aside.
“You claim,” someone objects, “that we must carefully select those for whom we do good turns. . . . And what’s more, you ask where and in what manner one ought to do them—something you would not need to ask, if doing good turns was a thing to be sought for its own sake. It’s a good turn no matter where and in what manner it’s done.” I answer: We seek honor for no other reason than for honor itself; yet, even if nothing else is sought, we still ask, what we ought to do and when and in what way. It’s these choices that constitute honor. Just so, when I choose for whom to do a good deed, I am making sure that my deed is in fact good. For if it’s done for some foul person, it’s neither a good deed nor an honor.
Returning a deposit is a thing to be sought for its own sake, yet I won’t return it on every occasion, nor in any place or time. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether I withhold it or return it openly. I’ll look to the advantage of the person to whom I’m going to return it, and I’ll deny that person any deposit that will cause harm. I’ll do just the same with gifts and good deeds, examining when, to whom, how, and why I should give them. Nothing must be done unless by way of Reason. It’s not a benefit if it’s not given by way of Reason, for Reason accompanies every honorable deed.
How often have we heard this utterance from those condemning their own heedless gift: “I’d rather have lost it than given it to them!” A heedless gift is the most ignoble sort of loss; it’s much more serious to have given badly than not to have gotten something back. The fault is another’s, if we get nothing back, but our own, if we give to someone we didn’t choose carefully. But in the choosing, I will look least of all to that which you expect—namely, from whom I shall get a return. I’ll choose the one who’s grateful, not the one who’ll give back. Often the one who won’t give back is grateful, while the one who did so is an ingrate. My assessment aims at quality of mind. I’ll pass over a rich but unworthy fellow, and give to a virtuous pauper. That one will still be grateful in the depths of need. Though all else be lacking, the quality of mind will endure.
I don’t seek money, nor pleasure, nor glory from doing good turns. Content to please one person, I’ll give for this reason: to do what I ought. But that “ought” is still subject to choice. What sort of choice will it be, you ask? I’ll choose sound people, straightforward, mindful, grateful; those who leave alone what belongs to another, and keep a light grasp on what’s theirs; those who wish others well. I’ll choose such people, and if Fortune grants them nothing from which they might return the favor, the thing will be accomplished—by their feelings.
If it’s advantage and base calculation that makes me generous, if I help no one except to get that person to help me, then I won’t give to those who set out for distant, diverse regions, since they’ll always be far off; I won’t give to one who’s so ill as to have no hope of recovery; I won’t give when I myself am failing, when I don’t have the time to get my own back. But, so that you’ll recognize the impulse to do good as a thing sought for its own sake: We help those from foreign lands who’ve arrived in our ports and are soon to depart again; we give, and fit out, a boat for the shipwrecked stranger, to get him back home. He leaves scarcely knowing who sponsored his recovery, and, though never to turn back again and come into our sight, he appoints the gods as our debtors and prays that they return the favor on his behalf. Meanwhile, we take joy in contemplating our good deed, though it had no reward.
What then? When we have arrived at the very end of life, when we’re setting out our last wills, do we not distribute gifts that will not help us in any way? How much time is used up, how much thought do we take in solitude over how much we should give, and to whom! But what does it matter to whom we give, when we’ll get nothing back from anyone? Yet we never give more carefully, never twist and turn our decisions, than when honor alone stands before our eyes, all advantage stripped away. We are bad judges of our duties, so long as hope distorts them, and fear, and that most torpid of the vices, pleasure. When death has shut these out and has dispatched an incorruptible judge to pronounce sentence, we seek those most worthy to whom we may hand down our property; we make no arrangements more carefully and precisely, than those that have no bearing on us. By Hercules! A great pleasure indeed comes over the one who, at that moment, considers: “I’ll make this one wealthier; I’ll heap some splendor onto his merit, by adding my riches to his.” If we don’t give except when we’ll get a return, then we’ll have to die intestate!
[4.12.4] When you ask what return one gets from a gift or good deed, I will reply: “A good conscience.” What return comes from benefiting someone? Tell me, what return comes from justice, from innocence, from greatness of mind, from modesty, from self-restraint? If you seek something outside these virtues, you do not seek these virtues. For what end does the world change its seasons? For what does the sun lengthen the day, then shorten it? All these are benefits; they come about to do us good. Just as the cosmos has the duty of revolving the order of all matter, just as the sun has the duty to shift the places where it rises and sets, and to make these changes healthful for us, without any reward—just so, generosity is the duty of humanity. Why does one give? In order not to fail to give, not to lose the chance of doing good.
[4.14] If you give a benefit in order to reap a reward, you didn’t give it. You might as well claim that we give a benefit to animal stocks that we raise for our food or for labor! Or that we benefit the fruit trees we tend, lest they suffer from drought or from the hardness of dry, compacted soil! No one goes to cultivate a field out of a sense of justice or goodness, or does anything else in that spirit that produces an external gain. It’s beneficence that we’re called to, by thoughts neither greedy nor mean, but humane, generous, and willing to give even when we’ve already given, to increase prior gifts with new and fresh ones, having only this one objective, how much good we will do for the person to whom we give. It’s low and base, a thing without praise or renown, to do good because it’s expedient. What greatness is there in loving oneself, being soft on oneself, feathering one’s own nest? The true desire to give calls us away from all those, lays its hand on us and hauls us away toward loss, and gives up advantage for the very great joy of simply doing good.
[4.17.2] Just as there’s no law that bids us love our parents or gratify our children (for there’s no point in being pushed in the direction we were already headed), just as no one has to be encouraged toward love of self, which takes hold even at the moment of birth, just so there’s no law for this: seeking honorable things for their own sake. They give pleasure by their own nature, and virtue is so gratifying that even wicked people instinctively approve of better things. Is there anyone who would not wish to seem beneficent, who would not cherish a reputation for goodness even amid crimes and wrongs, who would not cloak in the semblance of rectitude his most lawless deeds and appear to have helped those he has harmed? Thus do people allow those whom they’ve destroyed to render thanks, and they fake being good and generous because they can’t give in reality. They wouldn’t do this unless love of honor, desirable for its own sake, compelled them to cultivate a reputation contrary to their natures, to hide their wickedness; they covet the gains they reap from it, but the quality itself incurs hatred and shame.
No one has fallen so far away from the law of nature, or detached from humanity, as to be evil from the heart. Pick anyone you want from among those who live by robbery, and ask whether he’d rather get by decent methods the things he pursues by theft and piracy. That man whose occupation is to lie in wait and attack passers-by will want to find things rather than steal them. You’ll meet no one who wouldn’t prefer to enjoy the rewards of wickedness if he could do so without being wicked. We have from nature this greatest award of all: Virtue casts its light into the souls of all people, and those who do not follow it, see it nonetheless.
[4.18] So that you may understand that gratitude is something to be sought for its own sake: Ingratitude is a thing to be shunned for its own sake. No other flaw so much undoes and tears apart the harmony of the human race. What else gives us safety, other than helping each other by good service? Life is better equipped and more fortified against sudden attacks by this one thing: exchange of good deeds. Suppose we’re just isolated individuals; what are we? Prey for wild animals, victims, the sweetest meat and the easiest to come by. Other creatures have enough strength for their own protection; those born to be rovers, destined for a solitary life, have been armed with defenses, but only a frail layer of skin cloaks humankind. We possess no strength of claw or fang to frighten other creatures. Naked and weak, we have only fellowship25 for protection.
God has given two things to take humankind from subservience to enormous strength: Fellowship and Reason. Thus, the creature that could hold its own with no other, if separated from its kind, is in fact lord of creation. Fellowship has given us dominion over all the animals, and though we were born for life on land, it has switched us to control of an alien sphere, commanding us to be masters even of the sea. It has fended off onsets of diseases, provided supports in advance of old age, and given comforts against sorrows; it makes us brave; we can call upon it as an aid against Fortune. Take away Fellowship and you break the unity of the human race, by which our life is sustained.
Yet Fellowship will be removed, if you reject the idea that ingratitude must be shunned for its own sake, and instead make fear the motive. For how many are there who can be ingrates in safety! In the end, I call ungrateful anyone who is grateful only through fear.
[4.20] “But,” you object, “there is some advantage gained from this virtue.” Yes, and of what virtue is that not true? Generosity is said to be sought for its own sake because it still gratifies us even if we take away, and distance ourselves from, whatever utility it has outside itself. It’s helpful to be grateful—yes, but I’ll do so even if it’s harmful. [4.20.3] It’s the ingrate who looks to another bequest at the moment he pays back the first, who anticipates while making return. I call them ingrates who sit beside a sick man because he’s making out a will, who take the time to ponder the man’s descendants and estate. Though they do all the things that good and dutiful friends are obliged to, if it’s hope of wealth that captivates their minds, they’re only fishermen dangling hooks. Just like birds that feed by tearing at the bodies of carrion, that watch for the members of the flock to grow sick and weak, picking out the next one to fall—so these people hang upon death and flitter about the corpse.
[4.21] The grateful heart is different; it’s held in thrall by the very virtue of its own designs. Do you want to know this for certain, to know that it is not corrupted by mere expedience? There are two kinds of grateful people. Some are called grateful because they give something back in exchange for what they received. These can make a display of generosity, perhaps; they have something to boast of, to exhibit. Others who are called grateful have received a gift with a good heart, and owe it in the same way, but keep their gratitude sealed up in their conscience. What advantage can they gain from this hidden emotion? Yet these too are grateful, even if able to do nothing more to show it. They love, they feel obligation, they want to return the favor. Even if you think something’s lacking beyond these things, they themselves lack for nothing.
[4.21.3] Let’s say I want to return a favor. I still have more to do beyond wanting, in order to be debt-free, whereas there’s nothing more needed to be grateful. Often the one who does repay a favor is an ingrate, and the one who doesn’t is the opposite. Just as with all the other virtues, so this one can only be reckoned up with reference to the heart. If the heart is dutiful, then Fortune is to blame for anything that’s lacking.
People are grateful even if they only want to be so, and have no other witness to that desire than themselves. No, I’ll push this even harder: Sometimes even those who seem to be ungrateful are grateful, even if public opinion, with its wicked distortions, portrays them as their contraries. What else do they follow except their own consciences?
[4.23] Is there any doubt that the orbits of the sun and the phases of the moon temper this home of the human race? Or that the heat of the sun nourishes our bodies, loosens the soil, restrains excesses of moisture, and dispels the gloom of all-binding winter, while the warmth of the moon, as it penetrates and exerts its influence, governs the ripening of fruits? Or that human fertility responds to the moon’s progress? Or that the sun’s circuit allows us to define the year, while the moon marks out the month as it revolves in smaller circles? Take away those secondary effects, and wouldn’t the sun still be a sight to behold, worthy of our adoration, if it did nothing more than pass overhead? Wouldn’t the moon deserve our gaze if it only sped past like a careless constellation?
The very universe that pours out its fires throughout the night and shines with such a countless multitude of stars—whose gaze does it not hold spellbound? Yet who imagines that these things are for their benefit, as they stand in wonder? Look upon them as they glide past in the heavens in such a multitude. How they disguise their speed in the semblance of a still, unmoving mass! How much is taking place during that night that you use for counting out the days of the calendar! How great the throng of events unscrolled beneath their silence! How vast a sequence of fates their unwavering course brings forth! [4.24] What then? Won’t you be gripped by the spectacle of so great a structure, even if it didn’t cover you, care for you, nurture you, beget you, and wash over you with its exhalations?
Just as the stars have special use for us and are vital and needful, yet hold our minds in thrall with their magnificence, just so does virtue of every kind, and gratitude above all, have much to offer us; yet it does not seek to be cherished on that account. It holds yet more within itself; those who count it among useful things don’t understand it very well. Is a person grateful because it brings advantage? Will the gratitude be matched to the scale of the advantage?
[4.25] We make it our goal to live in accord with Nature and to follow the gods’ example. Yet what do the gods seek, in whatever they do, other than simply the idea of doing it? Unless perhaps you suppose that they sense some reward for their labors from the smoke of sacrifice and the scent of burning incense? See how they toil every day, and how great the dole they provide; how many fruits they fill the earth with, how opportunely they stir the seas with winds that bear us to every shore, how heavy the sudden downpours with which they soften the soil and refresh the dry roots of springs, renewing them by pouring nourishment into their hidden sources. They do all this without recompense, without any benefit to themselves. Let our way of life, too, keep to this principle (if it does not swerve from its model): not to seek honorable things for the sake of a salary. Let us feel shame if any gift or good deed has a price. The gods, after all, are ours for free.
In the remaining three books of On Benefits, Seneca turns to specific problems in the ethics of giving; the discussion becomes more casuistic and less inspirational. It’s possible Seneca added these books at a later date than the composition of the first four. They are sampled less fully here.
The following passage strikes one of Seneca’s favorite themes (also sounded in On Anger, an essay excerpted in an earlier volume for this series, How to Keep Your Cool): the idea that failings of human nature are universal, and therefore our forgiveness for them should be universal as well. Then Seneca moves swiftly to another of his central themes (explored in How to Die, also in this series): the shadow cast by death on all human choices and values.
[5.15] “If we follow your thinking,” someone objects, “no one is ungrateful, just as, on the other hand, all are ungrateful.” Indeed—for as I’ve said, all fools are wicked; whoever has one failing, has them all; all people are foolish, and therefore wicked; so, all are also ungrateful.
What do I mean, you ask? Aren’t they so? Doesn’t the indictment against the human race arise from all sides? Isn’t it a source of public outrage that gifts and good deeds are squandered, and that there are very few people who don’t return the worst sort of treatment to those who have treated them well? [5.17.3] We are a nation of ingrates. Let each do a personal inquiry: no one will fail to find an ingrate to complain of. And it’s not possible that everyone would file this complaint, unless everyone deserved to be complained of. So it follows that all are ungrateful.
But are they only ungrateful?26 No, they’re all greedy, and spiteful, and fearful (especially those who seem bold). Add this: they’re all ambitious and irreverent. But there’s no cause to get angry. Forgive them, for they’re all insane.
I don’t want to lead you into obscurities, so I say: “Look, how ungrateful youth is! Who, though innocent, does not hope for his father’s last day; who, though self-restrained, does not await that day, or think about it, though dutiful? How much does each of us fear the death of a spouse, yet who does not also reckon up the odds that it will happen? What defendant acquitted of crime, I ask you, retains the memory of such a great boon beyond the very next hour?”
Here’s something that’s widely acknowledged: Who dies without a complaint? Who dares to say on his last day, “I’ve lived, and I’ve finished the course Fortune set me?” Who doesn’t leave this life protesting and groaning? Yet to be dissatisfied with the time that has passed is the mark of an ingrate. Your days will always be few if you count them. Don’t think of your highest good as length of time. However much you have, consider it a boon. Though your day of death be postponed, that won’t advance your good fortune; your life won’t be happier for the delay, just longer. How much better, in view of the pleasures you have reaped, not to count up the years of others but to make a kindly assessment of your own, and set them down as a profit! “God judged me worthy of this much, and this much is enough. God might have done more, but this alone is a gift.” Let’s be grateful toward the gods, toward humankind, toward those who have done something for us or for those we hold dear.
Throughout his essays, Seneca summons the words of imagined critics, then replies to them (prompting some ancient scribes to classify these works as “dialogues”). In the following segment, Seneca returns to a distinction he has already made, between gifts and loans, exploring it this time by conversing with a fictitious speaker who claims Seneca has blurred those two categories.
[5.20.6] Someone will say: “Why do you spend so much effort asking to whom you should do a good turn, as though you were someday going to seek repayment?” Some people think that repayment should never be asked. They advance these reasons: “The unworthy will not repay even when asked; the worthy will repay of their own accord. Besides, if you give to a good person, beware lest you insult him by calling in the chit, as though he had not been about to repay voluntarily. If you give to a bad person, you’re the victim, but don’t ruin a gift by making it into a loan.”
[5.20.7] Words, words, words. So long as I’m not in any way pressed, so long as Fortune does not compel it, I’d rather count my good turn as a loss than ask for it back. But if there’s a question of my children’s health, if my wife is placed in any danger, if the safety and freedom of my homeland sends me to where I don’t want to go, I’ll master my shame and I’ll bear witness that I’ve done all I can to avoid needing the help of an ungrateful person, but at last the need to retrieve my good turn will conquer my embarrassment at asking for payback. As I’ve said, when I give to a good person, I do so as though never intending to ask for it back, unless it becomes necessary.
[5.21.2] “But you’re making a benefit into a loan!” you say. Not at all. I don’t demand, but merely request—in fact, I don’t even request so much as remind. Will even the ultimate necessity drive me to approach someone with whom I would need to have a long quarrel? Surely not. If anyone’s so ungrateful that even a reminder is not enough, I’ll pass on by and regard as unworthy the person who must be forced to be grateful.
[5.22] There are many who are in the dark both about denying and repaying what they’ve received, who are not as good as the grateful nor as wicked as the ingrates, who are merely slow and late—overdue loans rather than bad debts. I won’t ask for payback from these, but I’ll remind them and lead them back to their duty from their other pursuits. They’ll reply right away: “Forgive me; by Hercules, I didn’t know that you needed it, or I would have brought it to you without prompting; I beg you not to think of me as ungrateful. I remember well what you did for me.” Why would I hesitate to make these people better than they were, both for my sake and their own? Whomever I can prevent from doing wrong, I shall prevent, especially a friend, both so that he doesn’t do wrong and, most of all, doesn’t wrong me. I give him another gift if I stop him from becoming an ingrate. What’s more, I won’t remonstrate harshly over what I did for him, but as gently as I am able.
[5.23] Some people should be woken up with just a nudge, not a blow, and in the same way, some people’s good-faith sense of gratitude is not dead, just asleep. Let’s wake it up.
In book 6, Seneca returns to the idea (already expressed in books 2 and 4) that the gods are our models of generosity. This time, he gives the theme a stronger astronomical focus, since the planets and other heavenly bodies are, in his eyes, embodiments of the gods’ beneficence, if not gods themselves. He once again invokes an imaginary opponent to serve as his straw man—someone who doesn’t believe that the sun and moon deserve our gratitude. The argument against this person hinges on the question of whether these heavenly bodies are truly benevolent—that is, whether they have a desire to help humankind.
[6.19.5] A deed must be done on my account in order to put me under obligation. “But if you think that way,” you say, “you owe nothing to the moon or the sun; for they’re not set in motion on your account.” But since they are set in motion in order to preserve the cosmos, they are also set in motion for me—I’m a part of that cosmos. Anyway, our condition and theirs is not the same. If someone helps me in order that through me he may help himself, he has not done a good deed, but only made me an implement of his own advantage. But the sun and moon can’t help themselves through helping us, even if they do help us (for their own reasons). For what help could we possibly give them?
[6.21] “I’d understand that the sun and moon want to help us,” you say, “if they were able to not want that. But they can’t cease to be in motion. Here’s my point: Let them stand still and take a break from their service.” [6.21.4] “Let them cease wanting,” you say. Here you run into the following: Who is so insane as to deny that a will exists when it runs no risk of ceasing or changing into the opposite—seeing that, to look at the contrary case, no one seems to want as much as the person whose will is so fixed as to be eternal? If someone wants who can, in an instant, cease to want, doesn’t the one to whom “not wanting” never occurs seem to truly want?
“Well alright, let them stop if they can,” you say. This is what you’re saying: Let all those objects, separated by huge distances and put in place for the care of the universe, desert their posts; let stars smash into stars in a sudden confusion of matter, and with the harmony of things torn asunder, let divinity collapse into ruin, let the whole tapestry, with its incomparable speed, call a halt in mid-motion to orbits that were promised for so many ages, and let all that now moves by turns to and fro with ideal balance, smoothing out the earth’s temperatures, be consumed by a sudden blaze; out of this great diversity, let everything dissolve and melt into one thing; let fire take hold of all, then torpid night possess it, and let the deep abyss drain down this great number of gods.
Is it worth the ruin of all this to show you that you’re wrong? These heavenly objects do help you, even if you don’t want them to, and they stay in motion for your sake, even if they started up for some other, greater sake.
[6.23] Consider this too, that nothing external compels the gods, but their will is everlasting and follows their own law. What they have established does not change. They can’t seem to be going to do something that they don’t want to do. Whatever they can’t stop, they wanted to continue moving; they never have regret for the plan they first contrived. Without doubt, they cannot stand still, or withdraw to the opposite side, but the only reason is that their own power holds them to their purpose; they remain steadfast, not through feebleness but because it does not please them to stray from perfection, and because it was established that they move thus. What’s more, in that first dispensation, when they set out the stuff of the cosmos, they had regard even for our lot, and took account of humanity. Thus, they can’t be seen to run through the skies and unfold their work solely for their own sake, since we too are a part of that work.
So we do owe a debt of good will toward the sun, the moon, and the other celestial bodies; even if they rise in the sky for reasons they deem more pressing, they still assist us as they advance to greater things. Then add this: They aid us according to a plan; we’re in their debt. We didn’t merely stumble on a gift bestowed by ignorant beings. They knew we would receive the things we’ve received; and though their purpose is grander than mere preservation of the mortal sphere, and the reward of their action is greater as well, yet their mind was extended toward our advantage since the beginning of all things, and the world has been so ordered as to reveal that the gods’ care for us was far from their least concern.
We owe reverence to our parents, though many of them did not intend our procreation. But we cannot imagine the gods didn’t know what they were going to achieve when they provided aid and a continuous food supply to all living things. We cannot imagine that they created by accident the creatures for whom they produced so much.
Nature imagined us before making us. We’re not such a trivial creation that we could have simply dropped out of her. Just look at how much scope we are given, and how human power extends far beyond the human realm. Look at how widely Nature allows our bodies to travel, not stopping them at the boundaries of lands but sending them into every part of herself. Look at the great daring of our minds, how these alone come either to know the gods or to seek them, and to join with divinities by way of thoughts raised on high. You’ll know then that humankind is not a rag-tag or unplanned creation. There’s nothing among Nature’s greatest objects she can boast of more, or certainly, no other she can boast to.
What madness then to dispute with the gods over whether we’ve been given a gift! How can we ever show gratitude to those who can be thanked only by outlay of expense, if we deny that we’ve had the generosity of the beings who’ve been most generous to us, and who will both continue to give and will never get anything back?27
How bad a flaw is ingratitude? The closing segment of On Benefits shows Seneca once again contemplating this question, this time in a more charitable frame of mind than in books 2, 3, and 4. He here relies on his notion of the universal sinfulness of humankind to argue that ingrates, like other sinners, deserve forgiveness and kind treatment. He illustrates this notion with a vivid analogy, comparing humanity to a rampaging army sacking a conquered city. In that chaos of greed and violence, who can be expected to act well?
The point Seneca wants to establish is that only by accepting ingratitude can we continue to be generous (which is to say, virtuous) beings. We must never allow our disappointment in those who receive to stop us from giving.
[7.26] You ask the most essential question of all, one fitting for the closing section of this essay: How are we to treat the ungrateful? I say: With a tranquil, calm, and noble mind. However ungrateful, thoughtless, and inhuman the ones who offend you, don’t ever regret your decision to give. Never let outrage push you into statements like this: “I wish I hadn’t done it.” Rather, take pleasure in the bad outcome of your gift. They will always have regrets, provided that you feel no regret at this moment. You’ve no cause for indignation, as though something novel had happened; you ought rather to be amazed if it had not happened. The effort required deters some from gratitude; expense, others; danger, others; still others, a contemptible embarrassment, an unwillingness to admit, by giving back, that they have received; others, ignorance of duty; others, laziness; still others, a busy schedule.
Look here! how the vast desires of humanity always grasp and demand; you won’t be surprised then if no one gives back, since no one gets enough. Who among us is of such sound and solid character that you can safely put your gifts in their hands? One rages with lust, another’s a slave to his belly; another’s all about money, looking only to his bottom line, not to the means of earning it; another struggles with envy, another with blind ambition that rushes headlong into armed combat. Now add slowness of mind, and old age, and at the other extreme, the restlessness and ceaseless tumults of an unquiet heart. Add a too-great sense of self-worth and swollen arrogance over things that deserve our disdain. Why mention stubborn striving for depravities, or shallow flitting from one thing to another? There’s more—headlong rashness, fear that never gives loyal counsel, a thousand wrongs in which we’re wrapped up; the boldness of the most timid, the discord of those most closely bound together, and, our national vice, trust in uncertainties, and contempt for possessions we once had no hope of acquiring. Among these most unstable of passions, do you really seek faithfulness, the most stable thing of all?
[7.27] If a true picture of human life should come into your thoughts, you’ll think you see the image of a city just captured. All regard for shame and right has been lost; violence is in charge, as though the signal had been given to throw everything into chaos. Fire and sword hold sway; crime is released from restraint of law; not even religion, normally a shield for suppliants even amid enemy weapons, restrains those rushing to seize booty. Plunderers assault the private and the public, the sacred and profane; they break down doors and leap over walls, or, not content with a narrow entrance, hurl down whatever blocks them and reach for riches over the ruins. One man despoils but does not kill; another carries off his booty with a bloody hand. There’s no one who doesn’t grab something from someone else.
You there! Too forgetful of our common lot, amid this greed of the human race—if, that is, you’re looking amid the city-sackers for someone to give something back. If you feel outrage that there are ingrates, feel it also for the overindulgent, the greedy, the unchaste. . . . Ingratitude is a serious failing, beyond endurance; it dissolves human bonds, breaks up and destroys the harmony by which our frailty is protected. Yet it’s so common that even those who complain of it don’t escape it.
Take stock with yourself. Have you returned a favor to those you owed? Has no service ever been lost on you? Does the memory of all your benefits stay with you for all time? You’ll discover that things given in childhood slipped away before adolescence; those bestowed in youth did not survive into old age. Some we lose, others we toss out, some disappear little by little from our gaze, from others we turn away our eyes. [7.28.2] You might find in your own heart, if you search yourself thoroughly, the fault you complain of. You’re unjust if you’re angry at a general offense, foolish, if at your own; give pardon and you’ll be pardoned. You’ll make others better by bearing with them, worse, by your reproach. There’s no reason to furrow their brows; let them save face, however much face they have left. Often the too-loud voice of a carping critic shatters a shaky set of scruples. We don’t fear to be what we seem. It’s the one who’s been found out who loses the sense of shame.28
[7.29] “I wasted my gift,” you say. But do we ever call “lost” the things we have dedicated to the gods? A gift or good deed well bestowed is one of those things, even if it spurs a bad response. “He’s not the sort we thought he was”; but we should remain the sort we are, very different from him. Your loss only came to light at this moment; it happened long before. The ingrate brings shame on us when revealed, for we can’t make an issue of the lost gift without flagging the fact it was badly given. As much as we can, let’s plead his case in our own minds: “Perhaps he couldn’t, perhaps he didn’t realize, perhaps he’s still going to do it.” A patient and wise creditor sometimes collects on delinquent accounts by keeping them open and helping them by postponement. We must do likewise.29 Let’s nurture the sense of trust when it grows weary.
[7.30] “But I wasted my benefit.” Fool! You don’t understand the time sequence of your loss; you lost it when you gave it, even if that’s only now becoming clear. Even when things seem to be lost, an attitude of restraint does the most good. Handicaps of the mind, like those of the body, have to be dealt with gently. Often what you might have untangled with perseverance gets snapped off by a rash pull.30 What need is there of curses, of complaints, of abuse? Why release those you’ve helped, and set them free? I answer: If they’re ungrateful, so what? They owe you nothing. What’s the point in estranging those for whom you’ve done great things, so that you’ll make a sometime friend into a full-time enemy? So that they’ll seek their own protection by way of our disrepute? So that this will be heard: “I can’t figure out why he couldn’t put up with the one he owed so much to; there’s something going on”? Everyone besmirches, not to say sullies, the dignity of a higher-up, and no one is content with merely trivial slanders, seeking to win belief by the magnitude of the lie.31
[7.31] How much better is the path of preserving an appearance of friendship, or, if we want to return to sound thinking, true friendship! A commitment of good will overcomes the wicked. No one is of such harsh and hostile disposition, in the face of what ought to be cherished, as not to love good people even while wronging them—people to whom he owes this new debt, that he is not penalized for nonpayment. Turn your thoughts in this direction: “My favors were not returned. What should I do? What the gods do, the best sponsors of all things—they who start by giving to those who don’t know them, and continue giving to those who are ungrateful. Some hold them to blame for their neglect of us, others for unjust treatment; some situate them outside their own world and make them out slackers and sluggards, lacking light and having no function; some call the sun a kind of stone, or a chance accumulation of flames, or some other thing than a god—the sun, to which we owe the fact that we divide our time between work and rest, that we escape the chaos of eternal night (not plunged into darkness); the sun that moderates the seasons with its course through the sky, that nurtures our bodies, that brings forth crops and ripens fruit!
“But just like the best kind of parents, who smile at their young children’s curses, the gods don’t stop laying on benefits, even for those in doubt about the source of those benefits. They spread their good things among the nations and peoples in an unbroken, even stream. With the one power they are allotted—doing good—they sprinkle the lands with timely rains, move seas with the wind, mark out the seasons with courses of stars, soften the strength of summer and winter with brief stretches of milder weather, and endure, calmly and benignly, the error of our inconstant souls. Let’s do as they do. Let’s give, even if much that we give ends up useless. Let’s give to others nonetheless; let’s give even to those who caused our losses. Collapse never stopped anyone from raising up houses, and, when fire has consumed everything, down to the shrines of the gods, we lay foundations on the still-smoldering ground and commit new cities to the same soil where others sank. That’s how stubbornly the heart clings to good hopes. Human efforts would have come to a halt on land and sea, had it not pleased us to try once again the things we attempted unsuccessfully at first.
“So they’re ungrateful; they didn’t hurt me, but themselves. As for me, I got the reward of my gift when I gave it. I won’t be slower to give as a result of this, but more selective. What I squandered on them, I’ll get back from others. But even to them I’ll give once again, and, like a good farmer, I’ll overcome the sterile soil with care and cultivation. My gift is lost to me, but they are lost to humanity. It’s not the sign of a great soul to give a gift and lose it, but rather to lose it—and then give.”
With those words, On Benefits comes to a close. But Seneca again took up the topic of giving and receiving in one of his Moral Epistles, a set of open letters on various topics, composed near the end of his life. What follows is the last portion of Epistle 81, a letter that expands on many of the ideas discussed in On Benefits (and indeed is characterized by Seneca as a sequel to that work).