that in real fact I have thrown away all my
trouble. Wait, and soon you will be able to say this more truly, for
I shall lead you into covert lurking-places, from which when you have
escaped, you will have gained nothing except that you will have freed
yourself from difficulties with which you need never have hampered
yourself. What is the use of laboriously untying knots which you
yourself have tied, in order that you might untie them? Yet, just as
some knots are tied in fun and for amusement, so that a tyro may find
difficulty in untying them, which knots he who tied them can loose
without any trouble, because he knows the joinings and the difficulties
of them, and these nevertheless afford us some pleasure, because they
test the sharpness of our wits, and engross, our attention; so also
these questions, which seem subtle and tricky, prevent our intellects
becoming careless and lazy, for they ought at one time to have a field
given them to level, in order that they may wander about it, and at
another to have some dark and rough passage thrown in their way for them
to creep through, and make their way with caution. It is said by
our opponent that no one is ungrateful; and this is supported by the
following arguments: "A benefit is that which does good; but, as you
Stoics say, no one can do good to a bad man; therefore, a bad man does
not receive a benefit. (If he does not receive it, he need not return
it; therefore, no bad man is ungrateful.) Furthermore, a benefit is an
honourable and commendable thing. No honourable or commendable thing can
find any place with a bad man; therefore, neither can a benefit. If he
cannot receive one, he need not repay one; therefore, he does not become
ungrateful. Moreover, as you say, a good man does everything rightly; if
he does everything rightly, he cannot be ungrateful. A good man returns
a benefit, a bad man does not receive one. If this be so, no man, good
or bad, can be ungrateful. Therefore, there is no such thing in nature
as an ungrateful man: the word is meaningless." We Stoics have only one
kind of good, that which is honourable. This cannot come to a bad man,
for he would cease to be bad if virtue entered into him; but as long as
he is bad, no one can bestow a benefit upon him, because good and bad
are contraries, and cannot exist together. Therefore, no one can do good
to such a man, because whatever he receives is corrupted by his vicious
way of using it. Just as the stom