through that of others. That which is bestowed with a view to
profit is not a benefit. "I will give this in order that I may get
a return for it" is the language of a broker.

XIV. I should not call a woman modest, if she rebuffed her lover in
order to increase his passion, or because she feared the law or her
husband; as Ovid says:

"She that denies, because she does not dare
To yield, in spirit grants her lover's prayer."

Indeed, the woman who owes her chastity, not to her own virtue, but
to fear, may rightly be classed as a sinner. In the same manner, he
who merely gave in order that he might receive, cannot be said to
have given. Pray, do we bestow benefits upon animals when we feed
them for our use or for our table? do we bestow benefits upon trees
when we tend them that they may not suffer from drought or from
hardness of ground? No one is moved by righteousness and goodness
of heart to cultivate an estate, or to do any act in which the
reward is something apart from the act itself; but he is moved to
bestow benefits, not by low and grasping motives, but by a kind and
generous mind, which even after it has given is willing to give
again, to renew its former bounties by fresh ones, which thinks
only of how much good it can do the man to whom it gives; whereas
to do any one a service because it is our interest to do so is a
mean action, which deserves no praise, no credit. What grandeur is
there in loving oneself, sparing oneself, gaining profit for
oneself? The true love of giving calls us away from all this,
forcibly leads us to put up with loss, and foregoes its own
interest, deriving its greatest pleasure from the mere act of doing