Whoever believes that giving is an easy matter, makes a mistake; it is a matter of very great difficulty, provided that gifts are made with wisdom, and are not scattered at haphazard and by caprice. To this man I do a service, to that one make return; this one I succor, this one I pity; I supply this other one because he does not deserve to be dragged down by poverty and have it engross him; to some I shall not give although they are in need, because, even if I should give, they would still be in need; to some I shall proffer my help, upon certain ones even thrust it. In this matter I cannot afford to be careless; never am I more careful to register names than when I am giving.
“What!” you say, “do you give with the intention of taking back?” No, with the intention of not wasting; the status of giving should be that no return ought to be asked, yet that a return is possible. A benefit should be stored away like a deep buried treasure, which you would not dig up except from necessity. Why, the very house of a rich man — what an opportunity it offers for conferring benefit! Whose voice invokes liberality only for-the man that wears a toga [42]? Nature bids me do good to all mankind — whether slaves or freemen, freeborn or freed-men, whether the laws gave them freedom or a grant in the presence of friends — what difference does it make? Wherever there is a human being there is the opportunity for a kindness. And so it is possible to be lavish with money even inside the threshold and to find there a field for one’s liberality which is so called, not because it is owed to a free man, but because it is born from a free mind. This, in the case of a wise man, is never hurled at base and unworthy men, and never makes the mistake of being so exhausted that it cannot flow from a full hand, as it were, as often as it finds a worthy object. [43]
You have no excuse, therefore, for hearing wrongly the honorable, brave, and heroic utterances of those who pursue wisdom. And pay heed first to this — it is one thing to pursue wisdom, and another to have already attained wisdom. A man of the first type will say to you: “My words are most excellent, but I still wallow in evils, very many of them. You have no right to require me to live up to my own standard. Just now I am still fashioning and moulding myself and trying to lift myself to the height of a lofty ideal; when I shall have accomplished all that I have set before me, then require me to make my actions accord with my words.” But he who has already attained the height of human good will plead with you otherwise, and will say: “In the first place, you have no right to permit yourself to pass judgment on your betters. As for me I have already had the good fortune to win the displeasure of the wicked, which is proof enough of my uprightness, but, that I may give you the explanation that I grudge to no mortal man, hear what I maintain and what value I set on each thing. I deny that riches are a good; for if they were, they would make men good. As it is, since that which is found in the hands of the wicked cannot be called a good, I refuse to apply the term to riches. Nevertheless I admit that they are desirable, that they are useful, and that they add great comforts to living.