It is now time to produce something coined, so to speak, in the Stoic mint.13 He who has given a benefit that falls short of being the best faces the possibility of being outdone. A father has given life to his son, but there is something better than life; so the father can be outdone because he has given a benefit that falls short of being the best. Again, if a man who has given life to another has been freed, time and again, from the peril of death, he has received a greater benefit than he gave. Now, a father has given life; if, therefore, he should be repeatedly freed from the peril of death by his son, it is possible for him to receive a greater benefit than he gave. The more need a man has of a benefit, the greater is the benefit he receives. Now, one who is alive has more need of life than one who has not been born, since such a one can feel no need at all; consequently, if a father has received life from his son, he has received a greater benefit from the son than the son received from his father by being born. “Benefits from a father,” you say, “cannot be surpassed by benefits from a son. And why? Because the son received life from his father, and, unless he had received it, he could not have given any benefits at all.” But a father has this in common with all men who have at any time given life to others; for these would not have been able to return gratitude unless they had received the gift of their lives. Consequently, you cannot return too much gratitude to a physician (for physicians also habitually give life), nor to a sailor if he has rescued you from shipwreck. Yet the benefits of these and of others, who have in some fashion given us life, are capable of being surpassed; therefore those of a father also are capable of it. If anyone has given to me the sort of benefit that needs to be supplemented by benefits from many others, while I have given to him the benefit that needs a supplement from no man, then I have given a greater one than I have received. Now a father gave to his son a life which, unless it had had many accessories that preserved it, would have perished; whereas a son, if he has given life to his father, gave that which needed the help of no man to make it endure; therefore a father who received his life from a son received a greater benefit than he himself gave.