the fact of his bounty being poured upon
us in an uninterrupted stream, as an argument to prove that he cannot
help bestowing it. Suppose that such men as these say, "I do not want
it," "Let him keep it to himself," "Who asks him for it?" and so forth,
with all the other speeches of insolent minds: still, he whose bounty
reaches you, although you say that it does not, lays you under an
obligation nevertheless; indeed, perhaps the greatest part of the
benefit which he bestows is that he is ready to give even when you are
complaining against him.

XXIV. Do you not see how parents force children during their infancy
to undergo what is useful for their health? Though the children cry and
struggle, they swathe them and bind their limbs straight lest premature
liberty should make them grow crooked, afterwards instill into them a
liberal education, threatening those who are unwilling to learn, and
finally, if spirited young men do not conduct themselves frugally,
modestly, and respectably, they compel them to do so. Force and harsh
measures are used even to youths who have grown up and are their own
masters, if they, either from fear or from insolence, refuse to take
what is good for them. Thus the greatest benefits that we receive,
we receive either without knowing it, or against our will, from our
parents.

XXV. Those persons who are ungrateful and repudiate benefits, not
because they do not wish to receive them, but in order that they may not
be laid under an obligation for them, are like those who fall into the
opposite extreme, and are over grateful, who pray that some trouble or
misfortune may befall their benefactors to give them an opportunity
of proving how gratefully they remember the benefit which they have
received. It is a question whether they are right, and show a truly
dutiful feeling; their state of mind is morbid, like that of frantic
lovers who long for their mistress to be exiled, that they may accompany
her when she leaves her country forsaken by all her friends, or that she
may be poor in order that she may the more need what they give her, or
who long that she may be ill in order that they may sit by her bedside,
and who, in short, out of sheer love form the same wishes as her enemies
would wish for her. Thus the results of hatred and of frantic love are
very nearly the same; and these lovers are very like those who hope that
their friends may meet with difficulties which they may remove, and who
thus