with a thankless man. If he has met but with one, he has either been very fortunate or very careful. And yet care is not sufficient: for there is no way to escape the hazard of losing a benefit but the not bestowing of it, and to neglect a duty to myself for fear another should abuse it. It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so. The business of mankind would be at a stand, if we should do nothing for fear of miscarriages in matters of certain event. I will try and believe all things, before I give any man over, and do all that is possible that I may not lose a good office and a friend together. What do I know but he may misunderstand the obligation? business may have put it out of his head, or taken him off from it: he may have slipt his opportunity. I will say, in excuse of human weakness, that one man’s memory is not sufficient for all things; it is but a limited capacity, so as to hold only so much, and no more: and when it is once full, it must let out part of what it had to take in anything beside; and the last benefit ever sits closest to us. In our youth we forget the obligations of our infancy, and when we are men we forget those of our youth. If nothing will prevail, let him keep what he has and welcome; but let him have a care of returning evil for good, and making it dangerous for a man to do his duty. I would no more give a benefit for such a man, than I would lend money to a beggarly spendthrift; or deposit any in the hands of a known knight of the post. However the case stands, an ungrateful person is never the better for a reproach; if he be already hardened in his wickedness, he gives no heed to it; and if he be not, it turns a doubtful modesty into an incorrigible impudence: beside that, he watches for all ill words to pick a quarrel with them.
As the benefactor is not to upbraid a benefit, so neither to delay it: the one is tiresome, and the other odious. We must not hold men in hand, as physicians and surgeons do their patients, and keep them longer in fear and pain than needs, only to magnify the cure. A generous man gives easily, and receives as he gives, but never exacts. He rejoices in the return, and judges favorably of it whatever it be, and contents himself with bare thanks for a requital. It is a harder matter with some to get the benefit after it is promised than the first promise of it, there must be so many friends made in the case. One must be desired to solicit another; and he must be entreated to move a third; and a fourth must be at last besought to receive it; so that the author, upon the upshot, has the least share in the obligation. It is then welcome when it comes free, and without deduction; and no man either to intercept or hinder, or to detain it. And let it be of such a quality too, that it be not only delightful in the receiving, but after it is received; which it will certainly be, if we do but observe this rule, never to do any thing for another which we would not honestly desire for ourselves.
CHAPTER XVI.
HOW THE RECEIVER OUGHT TO BEHAVE HIMSELF.
There are certain rules in common betwixt the giver and the receiver. We must do both cheerfully, that the giver may receive the fruit of his benefit in the very act of bestowing it. It is a just ground of satisfaction to see a friend pleased; but it is much more to make him so. The intention of the one is to be suited to the intention of the other; and there must be an emulation betwixt them, whether shall oblige most. Let the one say, that he has received a benefit, and let the other persuade himself that he has not returned it. Let the one say, I am paid, and the other, I am yet in your debt; let the benefactor acquit the receiver, and the receiver bind himself. The frankness of the discharge heightens the obligation. It is in conversation as in a tennis-court; benefits are to be tossed like balls; the longer the rest, the better are the gamesters. The giver, in some respect, has the odds, because (as in a race) he starts first, and the other must use great diligence to overtake him. The return must be larger than the first obligation to come up to it; and it is a kind of ingratitude not to render it with interest. In a matter of money, it is a common thing to pay a debt out of course, and before it be due; but we account ourselves to owe nothing for a good office; whereas the benefit increases by delay. So insensible are we of the most important affair of human life! That man were doubtless in a miserable condition, that could neither see, nor hear, nor taste, nor feel, nor smell; but how much more unhappy is he then that, wanting a sense of benefits, loses the greatest comfort in nature in the bliss of giving and receiving them? He that takes a benefit as it is meant is in the right; for the benefactor has then his end, and his only end, when the receiver is grateful.
The more glorious part, in appearance, is that of the giver; but the receiver has undoubtedly the harder game to play in many regards. There are some from whom I would not accept of a benefit; that is to say, from those upon whom I would not bestow one. For why should I not scorn to receive a benefit where I am ashamed to own it? and I would yet be more tender too, where I receive, than where I give; for it is no torment to be in debt where a man has no mind to pay; as it is the greatest delight imaginable to be engaged by a friend, whom I should yet have a kindness for; if I were never so much disobliged. It is a pain to an honest and a generous mind to lie under a duty of affection against inclination. I do not speak here of wise men, that love to do what they ought to do; that have their passions at command; that prescribe laws to themselves, and keep them when they have done; but of men in a state of imperfection, that may have a good will perhaps to be honest, and yet be overborne by the contumacy of their affections. We must therefore have a care to whom we become obliged; and I would be much stricter yet in the choice of a creditor for benefits than for money. In the one case, it is but paying what I had, and the debt is discharged; in the other, I do not only owe more, but when I have paid that, I am still in arrear: and this law is the very foundation of friendship. I will suppose myself a prisoner; and a notorious villain offers to lay down a good sum of money for my redemption. First, Shall I make use of this money or not? Secondly, If I do, what return shall I make him for it? To the first point, I will take it; but only as a debt; not as a benefit, that shall ever tie me to a friendship with him; and, secondly, my acknowledgment shall be only correspondent to such an obligation. It is a school question, whether or not Brutus, that thought Cæsar not fit to live, (and put himself at the head of a conspiracy against him,) could honestly have received his life from Cæsar, if he had fallen into Cæsar’s power, without examining what reason moved him to that action? How great a man soever he was in other cases, without dispute he was extremely out in this, and below the dignity of his profession. For a Stoic to fear the name of a king, when yet monarchy is the best state of government; or there to hope for liberty, where so great rewards are propounded, both for tyrants and their slaves; for him to imagine ever to bring the laws to their former state, where so many thousand lives had been lost in the contest, not so much whether they should serve or not, but who should be their master: he was strangely mistaken, in the nature and reason of things, to fancy, that when Julius was gone, somebody else would not start up in his place, when there was yet a Tarquin found, after so many kings that were destroyed, either by sword or thunder: and yet the resolution is, that he might have received it, but not as a benefit; for at that rate I owe my life to every man that does not take it away.
Græcinus Julius (whom Caligula put to death out of a pure malice to his virtue) had a considerable sum of money sent him from Fabius Persicus (a man of great and infamous example) as a contribution towards the expense of plays and other public entertainments; but Julius would not receive it; and some of his friends that had an eye more upon the present than the presenter, asked him, with some freedom, what he meant by refusing it? “Why,” says he, “do you think that I will take money where I would not take so much as a glass of wine?” After this Rebilus (a man of the same stamp) sent him a greater sum upon the same score. “You must excuse me,” says he to the messenger, “for I would not take any thing of Persicus neither.”
To match this scruple of receiving money with another of keeping it; and the sum not above three pence, or a groat at most. There was a certain Pythagorean that contracted with a cobbler for a pair of shoes, and some three or four days after, going to pay him his money, the shop was shut up; and when he had knocked a great while at the door, “Friend,” says a fellow, “you may hammer your heart
