But, just as I am forced to touch lightly upon irrelevant questions, so I must now explain that the first thing we have to learn is what it is that we owe when a benefit has been received. For one man says that he owes the money which he has received, another the consulship, another the priesthood, another the administration of a province. But these things are the marks of services rendered, not the services themselves. A benefit cannot possibly be touched by the hand; its province is the mind. There is a great difference between the matter of a benefit and the benefit itself; and so it is neither gold nor silver nor any of the gifts which are held to be most valuable that constitutes a benefit, but merely the goodwill of him who bestows it. But the ignorant regard only that which meets the eye, that which passes from hand to hand and is laid hold of, while they attach little value to that which is really rare and precious. The gifts that we take in our hands, that we gaze upon, that in our covetousness we cling to, are perishable; for fortune or injustice may take them from us. But a benefit endures even after that through which it was manifested has been lost; for it is a virtuous act, and no power can undo it.
If I have rescued a friend from pirates, and afterwards a different enemy seized him and shut him up in prison, he has been robbed, not of my benefit, but of the enjoyment of my benefit. If I have saved a man’s children from shipwreck or a fire and restored them to him, and afterwards they were snatched from him either by sickness or some injustice of fortune, yet, even when they are no more, the benefit that was manifested in their persons endures. All those things, therefore, which falsely assume the name of benefits, are but the services through which the goodwill8 of a friend reveals itself. The same thing is true also of other bestowals — the form of the bestowal is one thing, the bestowal itself another. The general presents a soldier with a breast-chain or with a mural and civic crown. But what value has the crown in itself? What the purple-bordered robe? What the fasces? What the tribunal and the chariot? No one of these things is an honor, they are the badges of honor. In like manner that which falls beneath the eye is not a benefit — it is but the trace and mark of a benefit.