“You admit,” says someone, “that there are times when we are under no obligation to the man from whom we have received a benefit; it has, therefore, been taken away.” There are many things that might cause us to cease to feel indebted for a benefit, not because it has been removed, but because it has been ruined. Suppose a man defends me in a lawsuit, but has forced my wife to commit adultery; he has not removed his benefit, but has freed me from indebtedness by matching his benefit with an equally great wrong, and, if he has injured me more than he had previously benefited me, he not only extinguishes my gratitude, but leaves me free to protest and avenge myself whenever, in balancing the two, the wrong outweighs the benefit; thus the benefit is not withdrawn, but is surpassed. Tell me, are not some fathers so harsh and so wicked that it is right and proper to turn away from them and disown them? Have they, then, withdrawn the benefits that they had given? By no means, but their unfeeling conduct in later years has removed the favor that they had won from all their earlier service. It is not the benefit, but gratitude for the benefit, that is removed, and the result is, not that I do not possess it, but that I am under no obligation for it. It is just as if someone should lend me money, and then set fire to my house. The loan has been balanced by my loss; I have made him no return, and yet I owe him nothing. In the same way, too, a man who has acted kindly and generously toward me, yet later has shown himself in many ways haughty, insulting, and cruel, places me in the position of being just as free from any obligation to him as if I had never received anything; he has murdered his benefits. Though the lease remains in force, a landlord has no claim against his tenant if he tramples upon his crops, if he cuts down his orchard; not because he received the payment agreed upon, but because he has made it impossible to receive it. So, too, a creditor is often adjudged to his debtor, when on some other account he has robbed him of more than he claims on account of the loan. It is not merely the creditor and debtor who have a judge to sit between them, and say: “You lent the man money. Very well, then! But you drove off his flock, you killed his slave, you have in your possession silver that you did not buy; having calculated the value of these, you who came into court as a creditor, must leave it as a debtor.” So, too, a balance is struck between benefits and injuries. Often, I say, the benefit endures, and yet imposes no obligation. If the giver repents of his gift, if he says that he is sorry that he gave it, if he sighs, or makes a wry face when he gives it, if he thinks that he is, not bestowing, but throwing away, his gift, if he gave it to please himself, or, at any rate, not to please me, if he persists in being offensive, in boasting of his gift, in bragging of it everywhere, and in making it painful to me, the benefit endures, although it imposes no obligation, just as certain sums of money to which a creditor can establish no legal right may be owed to him though he cannot demand them.