“You say,” someone retorts, “a benefit is a loan that cannot be repaid; but a loan is not something that is desirable in itself.” When I use the term “loan,” I resort to a figure, a metaphor; for in the same way I can also say that a law is the measure of justice and injustice, and a measure is not something desirable in itself. We resort to such terms for the purpose of making something clear; when I say a “loan,” a quasi-loan is understood. Do you wish to know the difference? I add the words “that cannot be repaid,” whereas every true loan either can or ought to be repaid. So far from its being right for us to give a benefit from a motive of self-interest, often, as I have said, the giving of it must involve one’s own loss and risk. For instance, I come to the rescue of a man who has been surrounded by robbers although I am at liberty to pass by in safety. By defending an accused man, who is battling with privilege, I turn against myself a clique of powerful men, and shall be forced perhaps by the same accusers to put on the mourning10 that I have removed from him, although I might take the other side, and look on in safety at struggles that do not concern me; I go bail for a man who has been condemned, and, when a friend’s goods are put up for sale, I quash the indictment, and shall probably make myself responsible for what he owes to his creditors; in order to save a proscribed person, I myself run the risk of proscription.
No one, when he wishes to acquire an estate at Tusculum or at Tibur because of their healthfulness and the retreat they afford in summer, stops to consider at how many years’ purchase11 he is going to buy; when once he has bought12 it, he must look after it. In the case of a benefit the same principle applies; for, when you ask me what the return will be, I answer, “the reward of a good conscience.” What return does one have from a benefit? Do you, pray, tell me what return one has from justice, from innocence, from greatness of soul, from chastity, from temperance; if you seek for anything besides the virtues themselves, it is not the virtues themselves that you seek. To what end does heaven perform its revolutions? To what end does the sun lengthen and shorten the day? These are all benefits, for they take place in order to work good to us. Just as it is the office of heaven to perform its revolutions in the fixed order of Nature, and that of the sun to shift the points at which it rises and sets, and to do these things that are serviceable to us without any reward, so it is the duty of man, amongst other things, to give also benefits. Why, then, does he give? For fear that he should fail to give, for fear that he should lose an opportunity of doing good.