ause against men of great influence. I do not wish to do so, yet what
am I to do? I have already helped him once, nay twice." Do you not
perceive how very powerful this instinct must be, if it leads us to
bestow benefits first because it is right to do so, and afterwards
because we have already bestowed somewhat? Though at the outset a man
may have had no claim upon us, we yet continue to give to him because we
have already given to him. So untrue is it that we are urged to bestow
benefits by our own interest, that even when our benefits prove failures
we continue to nurse them and encourage them out of sheer love of
benefiting, which has a natural weakness even for what has been
ill-bestowed, like that which we feel for our vicious children.

XVI. These same adversaries of ours admit that they are grateful, yet
not because it is honourable, but because it is profitable to be so.
This can be proved to be untrue all the more easily, because it can be
established by the same arguments by which we have established that to
bestow a benefit is desirable for its own sake. All our arguments start
from this settled point, that honour is pursued for no reason except
because it is honour. Now, who will venture to raise the question
whether it be honourable to be grateful? who does not loathe the
ungrateful man, useless as he is even to himself? How do you feel when
any one is spoken of as being ungrateful for great benefits conferred
upon him by a friend? Is it as though he had done something base, or had
merely neglected to do something useful and likely to be profitable to
himself? I imagine that you think him a bad man, and one who deserves
punishment, not one who needs a guardian; and this would not be the
case, unless gratitude were desirable in itself and honourable. Other
qualities, it may be, manifest their importance less clearly, and
require an explanation to prove whether they be honourable or no; this
is openly proved to be so in the sight of all, and is too beautiful for
anything to obscure or dim its glory. What is more praiseworthy, upon
what are all men more universally agreed, than to return gratitude for
good offices?

XVII. Pray tell me, what is it that urges us to do so? Is it profit?
Why, unless a man despises profit, he is not grateful. Is it ambition?
why, what is there to boast of in having paid what you owe? Is it
fear? The ungrateful man feels none, for against this one crime we
have provided no law, as