Tell me, what is the motive that leads to this? Gain? But he who does not scorn gain is ungrateful. Vainglory? And what is there to boast about in having paid what you owe? Fear? The ungrateful man has none; for this is the only crime for which we have provided no law, on the theory that Nature has taken sufficient precautions against it. Just as there is no law that bids us love our parents or indulge our children, for it is useless to push us in the direction in which we are already going, just as no one needs to be urged to self-love, which seizes him even while he is being born, so, too, there is none for this, no law that bids us seek the honorable in and for itself; it pleases us by its very nature, and so attractive is virtue that even the wicked instinctively approve of the better course.15 Who is there who does not wish to seem beneficent? who, even in the midst of his crimes and injuries, does not aspire to a reputation for goodness? who does not clothe even his most violent acts with some semblance of righteousness, and wish to have the appearance of having given a benefit even to those whom he has injured? And so men suffer those whom they have ruined to render them thanks, and they make a pretense of being good and generous because they are not able to, prove themselves so. But they would not do this unless the love of what is right and desirable in itself forced them to seek a reputation at variance with their characters, and conceal the wickedness, which they regard with hatred and shame, while they covet its fruits; no one has ever so far revolted from Nature’s law and put aside humanity as to be evil for the pleasure of it. For ask any of the men who live by robbery whether they would not prefer to attain by honorable means the things that they get by brigandage and theft. The man who gets his living by highway robbery and by murdering travelers will desire rather to find his booty than to snatch it; you will discover no one who would not prefer to enjoy the rewards of wickedness without the wickedness. Of all the benefits that we have from Nature this is the greatest, the fact that Virtue causes her light to penetrate into the minds of all; even those who do not follow her see her.