Anyone can receive, but no one can bestow, a benefit without knowing it. Many sick persons are cured by chance happenings that are not for that reason to be counted remedies, and a man’s falling into a river in very cold weather has restored him to health; some have had a quartan fever broken by a flogging, and the dangerous hours passed unnoticed because their sudden fear diverted their attention to another trouble, and yet none of these things are for that reason to be counted salutary, even if they have restored health. In like manner, certain persons do us service while they are unwilling, nay, because they are unwilling; and yet they do not for that reason make us indebted for a benefit, because it was Fortune that turned their harmful designs into good. Do you think that I am under any obligation to a man whose hand struck my enemy when it was aimed at me, who, unless he had blundered, would have done me an injury? Often a witness, by openly perjuring himself, causes even truthful witnesses to be disbelieved, and yet arouses compassion for the man under accusation because he seems to be beset by a conspiracy. Some men have been saved by the very power that was exerted to crush them, and judges, who were about to convict a man on the score of his case have refused to convict him on the score of influence.5 Yet, although the great men did him a service, it was not a benefit that they bestowed upon the accused, because it is a question of, not what the dart hits, but what it was aimed at, and it is, not the result, but the intention,that distinguishes a benefit from an injury. My opponent, by contradicting the judge, by offending him by his arrogance, and by rashly reducing his case to one witness, advanced my cause; I do not consider whether his mistake helped me — he meant to do me harm.