s are
due for it, since I could not have had it without paying for it, and
since the merchant who imported it did not consider how much good he
would do me, but how much he would gain for himself, I owe nothing for
what I have bought and paid for.

XV. "According to this reasoning," says my opponent, "you would say
that you owe nothing to a physician beyond his paltry fee, nor to your
teacher, because you have paid him some money; yet these persons are all
held very dear, and are very much respected." In answer to this I should
urge that some things are of greater value than the price which we pay
for them. You buy of a physician life and good health, the value of
which cannot be estimated in money; from a teacher of the liberal
sciences you buy the education of a gentleman and mental culture;
therefore you pay these persons the price, not of what they give us, but
of their trouble in giving it; you pay them for devoting their attention
to us, for disregarding their own affairs to attend to us: they receive
the price, not of their services, but of the expenditure of their time.
Yet this may be more truly stated in another way, which I will at once
lay before you, having first pointed out how the above may be confuted.
Our adversary would say, "If some things are of greater value than the
price which we pay for them, then, though you may have bought them, you
still owe me something more for them." I answer, in the first place,
what does their real value matter, since the buyer and seller have
settled the price between them? Next, I did not buy it at it's own
price, but at yours. "It is," you say, "worth more than its sale price."
True, but it cannot be sold for more. The price of everything varies
according to circumstances; after you have well praised your wares, they
are worth only the highest price at which you can sell them; a man who
buys things cheap is not on that account under any obligation to the
seller. In the next place, even if they are worth more, there is no
generosity in your letting them go for less, since the price is settled
by custom and the rate of the market, not by the uses and powers of the
merchandise. What would you state to be the proper payment of a man who
crosses the seas, holding a true course through the midst of the waves
after the land has sunk out of sight, who foresees coming storms, and
suddenly, when no one expects danger, orders sails to be furled, yards
to be lowered, and the crew