y, it is not the
thing done or the thing given that matters, it is the intention. The
spirit animating the act is what exalts trivial things, throws lustre on
mean things, while it can discredit great and highly valued ones. The
benefit itself does not consist in what is paid or handed over, just as
the worship of the gods lies not in the victims offered but in the
dutiful and upright feelings of the worshippers. If benefits consisted
in things, and not in the actual wish to benefit, then the more things
we got, the greater would the benefit be. But this is incorrect, for
sometimes the man who has given a little in a noble way obliges us more
deeply; the man, that is, who has forgotten his own poverty in his
regard for mine.

What comes from a willing hand is far more acceptable than what comes
from a full hand. "It was a small favour for him to do"; yes, but he
could do no more. "But it is a great thing which this other gave"; yes,
but he hesitated, delayed, grumbled in the giving, gave disdainfully, or
he made a show of it and had no mind to please the person on whom he
bestowed it. Why, such a man made a present to his own pride, not to me!

_II.--On Kinds of Benefits and the Manner of Giving_

Let us give, in the first place, what is necessary; secondly, what is
useful; next, what is pleasant, and one should add, what is likely to
last. We must begin with what is necessary; for a matter involving life
appeals to the mind differently from mere adornment and equipment.

A man may be a fastidious critic in the case of a thing which he can do
without. But necessary things are those without which we cannot live, or
without which we ought not to live, or without which we do not want to
live. Examples of the first group are, to be rescued from the hands of
the enemy, from a tyrant's anger, and the other chequered perils that
beset human life. Whichsoever of these we avert, we shall earn gratitude
proportionate to the terrible magnitude of the danger.

Next come things without which, it is true, we can live, yet only in
such plight that death were better; such things are freedom, chastity,
and good conscience. After these we shall rank things dear to us from
association, blood-ties, use, and custom; such as children, wife, home,
and all else round which affection has so entwined itself that it views
severance from them as more serious than severance from life. There is
the subsequent class of things useful, a wide and