at which you received; for you received it from a wise man,
and you are returning it to a fool." Do I not return to him such a
benefit, as he is now able to receive? It is not my fault if I return it
to him worse than I received it, the fault lies with him, and so, unless
he regains his former wisdom, I shall return it in such a form as he
in his fallen condition is able to receive. "But what," asks he, "if
he become not only bad, but savage and ferocious, like Apollodorus or
Phalaris, would you return even to such a man as this a benefit which
you had received from him?" I answer, Nature does not admit of so great
a change in a wise man. Men do not change from the best to the worst;
even in becoming bad, he would necessarily retain some traces of
goodness; virtue is never so utterly quenched as not to imprint on the
mind marks which no degradation can efface. If wild animals bred in
captivity escape into the woods, they still retain something of their
original tameness, and are as remote from the gentlest in the one
extreme as they are in the other from those which have always been wild,
and have never endured to be touched by man's hand. No one who has ever
applied himself to philosophy ever becomes completely wicked; his mind
becomes so deeply coloured with it, that its tints can never be entirely
spoiled and blackened. In the next place, I ask whether this man of
yours be ferocious merely in intent, or whether he breaks out into
actual outrages upon mankind? You have instanced the tyrants Apollodorus
and Phalaris; if the bad man restrains their evil likeness within
himself, why should I not return his benefit to him, in order to set
myself free from any further dealings with him? If, however, he not
only delights in human blood, but feeds upon it; if he exercises his
insatiable cruelty in the torture of persons of all ages, and his fury
is not prompted by anger, but by a sort of delight in cruelty, if he
cuts the throats of children before the eyes of their parents; if, not
satisfied with merely killing his victims, he tortures them, and not
only burns but actually roasts them; if his castle is always wet with
freshly shed blood; then it is not enough not to return his benefits.
All connexion between me and such a man has been broken off by his
destruction of the bonds of human society. If he had bestowed something
upon me, but were to invade my native country, he would have lost all
claim to my gratitude, and it woul