bids parents love and indulge their children, seeing that it is
superfluous to force us into the path which we naturally take, just
as no one needs to be urged to love himself, since self-love begins
to act upon him as soon as he is born, so there is no law bidding
us to seek that which is honourable in itself; for such things
please us by their very nature, and so attractive is virtue that
the disposition even of bad men leads them to approve of good
rather than of evil. Who is there who does not wish to appear
beneficent, who does not even when steeped in crime and wrong-doing
strive after the appearance of goodness, does not put some show of
justice upon even his most intemperate acts, and endeavour to seem
to have conferred a benefit even upon those whom he has injured?
Consequently, men allow themselves to be thanked by those whom they
have ruined, and pretend to be good and generous, because they
cannot prove themselves so; and this they never would do were it
not that a love of honour for its own sake forces them to seek a
reputation quite at variance with their real character, and to
conceal their baseness, a quality whose fruits we covet, though we
regard it itself with dislike and shame. No one has ever so far
rebelled against the laws of nature and put off human feeling as to
act basely for mere amusement. Ask any of those who live by robbery
whether he would not rather obtain what he steals and plunders by
honest means; the man whose trade is highway robbery and the murder
of travellers would rather find his booty than take it by force;
you will find no one who would not prefer to enjoy the fruits of
wickedness without acting wickedly. Nature bestows upon us all this
immense advantage, that the light of virtue shines into the minds
of all alike; even those who do not follow her, behold her.

XVIII. A proof that gratitude is desirable for itself lies in the