s use; and whither a benefit
extends, there is nothing useful or commodious. Now what else is there
that makes a kind office a benefit, but that the bestower of it is, in
some respect, useful to the needy receiver?

LAMPRIAS. But let these things pass. What, I beseech you, is this so
highly venerated utility, which preserving as some great and excellent
thing for the wise, they permit not so much as the name of it to the
vicious?

DIADUMENUS. If (say they) one wise man does but any way prudently
stretch out his finger, all the wise men all the world over receive
utility by it. This is the work of their amity; in this do the virtues
of the wise man terminate by their common utilities. Aristotle then and
Xenocrates doted, saving that men receive utility from the gods, from
their parents, from their masters, being ignorant of that wonderful
utility which wise men receive from one another, being moved according
to virtue, though they neither are together nor yet know it. Yet all
men esteem, that laying up, keeping, and bestowing are then useful and
profitable, when some benefit or profit is recovered by it. The thriving
man buys keys, and diligently keeps his stores,

With 's hand unlocking wealth's sweet treasury.
(From the "Bellerophontes" of Euripides, Frag. 287, vs. 8.)

But to store up and to keep with diligence and labor such things as are
for no use is not seemly or honorable, but ridiculous. If Ulysses indeed
had tied up with the knot which Circe taught him, not the gifts he
had received from Alcinous,--tripods, caldrons, cloths, and gold,--but
heaping up trash, stones, and such like trumpery, should have thought
his employment about such things, and the possession and keeping of
them, a happy and blessed work, would any one have imitated this
foolish providence and empty care? Yet this is the beauty, gravity, and
happiness of the Stoical consent, being nothing else but a gathering
together and keeping of useless and indifferent things. For such are
things according to Nature, and more exterior things; if indeed they
compare the greatest riches to fringes and golden chamberpots, and
sometimes also, as it happens, to oil-cruets. Then, as those who seem
proudly to have affronted and railed at some gods or demigods presently
changing their note, fall prostrate and sit humbly on the ground,
praising and magnifying the Divinity; so these men, having met with
punishment of this arrogancy and vanity, again ex