eturn for it" is the language of a broker.

XIV. I should not call a woman modest, if she rebuffed her lover in
order to increase his passion, or because she feared the law or her
husband; as Ovid says:

"She that denies, because she does not dare
To yield, in spirit grants her lover's prayer."

Indeed, the woman who owes her chastity, not to her own virtue, but to
fear, may rightly be classed as a sinner. In the same manner, he who
merely gave in order that he might receive, cannot be said to have
given. Pray, do we bestow benefits upon animals when we feed them for
our use or for our table? do we bestow benefits upon trees when we tend
them that they may not suffer from drought or from hardness of ground?
No one is moved by righteousness and goodness of heart to cultivate an
estate, or to do any act in which the reward is something apart from the
act itself; but he is moved to bestow benefits, not by low and grasping
motives, but by a kind and generous mind, which even after it has given
is willing to give again, to renew its former bounties by fresh ones,
which thinks only of how much good it can do the man to whom it gives;
whereas to do any one a service because it is our interest to do so is a
mean action, which deserves no praise, no credit. What grandeur is there
in loving oneself, sparing oneself, gaining profit for oneself? The true
love of giving calls us away from all this, forcibly leads us to put up
with loss, and foregoes its own interest, deriving its greatest pleasure
from the mere act of doing good.

XV. Can we doubt that the converse of a benefit is an injury? As the
infliction of injuries is a thing to be avoided, so is the bestowal of
benefits to be desired for its own sake. In the former, the disgrace of
crime outweighs all the advantages which incite us to commit it; while
we are urged to the latter course by the appearance of honour, in itself
a powerful incentive to action, which attends it.

I should not lie if I were to affirm that every one takes pleasure in
the benefits which he has bestowed, that everyone loves best to see the
man whom he has most largely benefited. Who does not thinks that to have
bestowed one benefit is a reason for bestowing a second? and would this
be so, if the act of giving did not itself give us pleasure? How often
you may hear a man say, "I cannot bear to desert one whose life I have
preserved, whom I have saved from danger. True, he asks me to plead his
c