because I should not live long enough to receive any return. Yet,
that you may know that to do good is desirable in itself, we afford
help to strangers who put into our harbour only to leave it
straightway; we give a ship and fit it out for a shipwrecked
stranger to sail back in to his own country. He leaves us hardly
knowing who it was who saved him, and, as he will never return to
our presence, he hands over his debt of gratitude to the gods, and
beseeches them to fulfil it for him: in the meanwhile we rejoice in
the barren knowledge that we have done a good action. What? when we
stand upon the extreme verge of life, and make our wills, do we not
assign to others benefits from which we ourselves shall receive no
advantage? How much time we waste, how long we consider in secret
how much property we are to leave, and to whom! What then? does it
make any difference to us to whom we leave our property, seeing
that we cannot expect any return from any one? Yet we never give
anything with more care, we never take such pains in deciding upon
our verdict, as when, without any views of personal advantage, we
think only of what is honourable, for we are bad judges of our duty
as long as our view of it is distorted by hope and fear, and that
most indolent of vices, pleasure: but when death has shut off all
these, and brought us as incorrupt judges to pronounce sentence, we
seek for the most worthy men to leave our property to, and we never
take more scrupulous care than in deciding what is to be done with
what does not concern us. Yet, by Hercules, then there steals over
us a great satisfaction as we think, "I shall make this man richer,
and by bestowing wealth upon that man I shall add lustre to his
high position." Indeed, if we never give without expecting some
return, we must all die without making our wills.

XII. It may be said, "You define a benefit as a loan which cannot