avoid
unsuitable confusion, it would be right that the above-named Songs be
opened and explained by a Commentary in our Native Tongue and not in
the Latin, I intend to show again how a ready Liberality makes me
select this way and leave the other. It is possible, then, to perceive
a ready Liberality in three things, which go with this Native Tongue,
and which would not have gone with the Latin. The first is to give to
many; the second is to give useful things; the third is to give the
gift without being asked for it.

For to give to and to assist one person is good; but to give to and to
assist many is ready goodness, inasmuch as it has a similitude to the
good gifts of God, who is the Benefactor of the Universe. And again,
to give to many is impossible without giving to one, forasmuch as one
is included in many. But to give to one may be good without giving to
many, because he who assists many does good to one and to the other;
he who assists one does good to one only: hence, we see the imposers
of the laws, especially if they are for the common good, hold the eyes
fixed whilst compiling these laws. Again, to give useless things to
the receiver is also a good, inasmuch as he who gives, shows himself
at least to be a friend; but it is not a perfect good, and therefore
it is not ready: as if a knight should give to a doctor a shield, and
as if the doctor should give to a knight the written aphorisms of
Hippocrates, or rather the technics of Galen; because the wise men say
that "the face of the gift ought to be similar to that of the
receiver," that is, that it be suitable to him, and that it be useful;
and therein it is called ready liberality in him who thus
discriminates in giving.

But forasmuch as moral discourses usually create a desire to see their
origin, in this chapter I intend briefly to demonstrate four reasons
why of necessity the gift (in order that it be ready liberality)
should be useful to him who receives. Firstly, because virtue must be
cheerful and not sad in every action: hence, if the gift be not
cheerful in the giving and in the receiving, in it there is not
perfect nor ready virtue. And this joy can spring only from the
utility, which resides in the giver through the giving, and which
comes to the receiver through the receiving. In the giver, then, there
must be the foresight, in doing this, that on his part there shall
remain the benefit of an inherent virtue which is above all other
advantages