Letter 81: On benefits
You complain that you have met with an ungrateful person. If this is your first experience of that sort, you should offer thanks either to your good luck or to your caution. In this case, however, caution can effect nothing but to make you ungenerous. For if you wish to avoid such a danger, you will not confer benefits; and so, that benefits may not be lost with another man, they will be lost to yourself.
It is better, however, to get no return than to confer no benefits. Even after a poor crop one should sow again; for often losses due to continued barrenness of an unproductive soil have been made good by one year's fertility.
In order to discover one grateful person, it is worthwhile to make trial of many ungrateful ones. No man has so unerring a hand when he confers benefits that he is not frequently deceived; it is well for the traveler to wander, that he may again cleave to the path. After a shipwreck, sailors try the sea again. The banker is not frightened away from the forum by the swindler.
If one were compelled to drop everything that caused trouble, life would soon grow dull amid sluggish idleness; but in your case this very condition may prompt you to become more charitable. For when the outcome of any undertaking is unsure, you must try again and again, in order to succeed ultimately. I have, however, discussed the matter with sufficient fulness in the volumes which I have written, entitled “On Benefits."
You complain that you have met with an ungrateful person. If this is your first experience of that sort, you should offer thanks either to your good luck or to your caution. In this case, however, caution can effect nothing but to make you ungenerous. For if you wish to avoid such a danger, you will not confer benefits; and so, that benefits may not be lost with another man, they will be lost to yourself.
It is better, however, to get no return than to confer no benefits. Even after a poor crop one should sow again; for often losses due to continued barrenness of an unproductive soil have been made good by one year's fertility.
In order to discover one grateful person, it is worthwhile to make trial of many ungrateful ones. No man has so unerring a hand when he confers benefits that he is not frequently deceived; it is well for the traveler to wander, that he may again cleave to the path. After a shipwreck, sailors try the sea again. The banker is not frightened away from the forum by the swindler.
If one were compelled to drop everything that caused trouble, life would soon grow dull amid sluggish idleness; but in your case this very condition may prompt you to become more charitable. For when the outcome of any undertaking is unsure, you must try again and again, in order to succeed ultimately. I have, however, discussed the matter with sufficient fulness in the volumes which I have written, entitled “On Benefits."
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 81
If I expect any further compensation, I am hardly granting a favor, and if I treat something as an entitlement, I am no longer welcoming a gift. This goes well beyond any question of social niceties, because how we choose to go about giving and receiving, in all aspects of life, is the foundation for each and every human relation.
If we could just get our personal sense of benefits in order, those sweeping problems of politics and economics would immediately disappear; we demand far too much, and we render far too little, and the world is a far more miserable place as a result.
I recently spoke to a graduate student in the Classics, who had just begun reading Seneca’s longer essay On Benefits, and she was quick to mock the opening lines:
Among the numerous faults of those who pass their lives recklessly and without due reflection, my good friend Liberalis, I should say that there is hardly any one so hurtful to society as this, that we neither know how to bestow or how to receive a benefit.
That she found this ridiculous, and I believed it to be spot-on, is a sad commentary on a vast divide concerning first principles, where some begin with a claim to rights, while others begin with a responsibility to charity; carefully observe the contrast between those who insist on the getting and those who are fulfilled through the serving. The Stoic remembers why his merit does not rest in the advantage of what is done to him, but in the virtue of what he does.
My uncle once said that the true value of any transaction was in the exchange of the words “thank you” and “you’re welcome.” I at first thought he was just talking about proper manners, yet I now see he was pointing to a deeper commitment to gratitude and goodwill. You can’t set a price on an excellence of character.
And what am I to do when someone refuses to be grateful, or takes advantage of my kindness? I am called to continue in my efforts, for his failures do not justify my own. You say that he has done me wrong? You have only reminded me of why I must do what is right. By denying a benefit to another, I am only betraying the dignity within myself.
Perhaps it sounds pessimistic to say, with Bias of Priene, that “most men are bad”. Even if this happens to be true, it is surely optimistic to say that every injustice calls for a constancy in justice, and that every sin can be forgiven through mercy. The Stoic knows why a difficulty is an opportunity, why patience is the remedy for the hardest heart, and why love is the only response to hatred.
Once I add the condition that you must pay me for my consideration, I can no longer claim to be acting from virtue, since decency is its own reward. I might appreciate your thanks, but I do not require it. I would be happy to see you pass it on, but my first duty is to follow my conscience. I become better by encouraging you to become better, and this far outweighs any inconvenience to my circumstances.
If I expect any further compensation, I am hardly granting a favor, and if I treat something as an entitlement, I am no longer welcoming a gift. This goes well beyond any question of social niceties, because how we choose to go about giving and receiving, in all aspects of life, is the foundation for each and every human relation.
If we could just get our personal sense of benefits in order, those sweeping problems of politics and economics would immediately disappear; we demand far too much, and we render far too little, and the world is a far more miserable place as a result.
I recently spoke to a graduate student in the Classics, who had just begun reading Seneca’s longer essay On Benefits, and she was quick to mock the opening lines:
Among the numerous faults of those who pass their lives recklessly and without due reflection, my good friend Liberalis, I should say that there is hardly any one so hurtful to society as this, that we neither know how to bestow or how to receive a benefit.
My uncle once said that the true value of any transaction was in the exchange of the words “thank you” and “you’re welcome.” I at first thought he was just talking about proper manners, yet I now see he was pointing to a deeper commitment to gratitude and goodwill. You can’t set a price on an excellence of character.
And what am I to do when someone refuses to be grateful, or takes advantage of my kindness? I am called to continue in my efforts, for his failures do not justify my own. You say that he has done me wrong? You have only reminded me of why I must do what is right. By denying a benefit to another, I am only betraying the dignity within myself.
Perhaps it sounds pessimistic to say, with Bias of Priene, that “most men are bad”. Even if this happens to be true, it is surely optimistic to say that every injustice calls for a constancy in justice, and that every sin can be forgiven through mercy. The Stoic knows why a difficulty is an opportunity, why patience is the remedy for the hardest heart, and why love is the only response to hatred.
Once I add the condition that you must pay me for my consideration, I can no longer claim to be acting from virtue, since decency is its own reward. I might appreciate your thanks, but I do not require it. I would be happy to see you pass it on, but my first duty is to follow my conscience. I become better by encouraging you to become better, and this far outweighs any inconvenience to my circumstances.
—Reflection written in 12/2013
IMAGE: Paul Gauguin, Maruru—An Offering of Gratitude (c. 1894)
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