and more benefits? What then? If a man is likely to meet with
affronts by showing his gratitude, if he knows that far from
gaining anything by it, he must lose much even of what he has
already acquired, will he not cheerfully act to his own
disadvantage? That man is ungrateful who, in returning a kindness,
looks forward to a second gift--who hopes while he repays. I call
him ungrateful who sits at the bedside of a sick man because he is
about to make a will, when he is at leisure to think of
inheritances and legacies. Though he may do everything which a good
and dutiful friend ought to do, yet, if any hope of gain be
floating in his mind, he is a mere legacy-hunter, and is angling
for an inheritance. Like the birds which feed upon carcases, which
come close to animals weakened by disease, and watch till they
fall, so these men are attracted by death and hover around a
corpse.

XXI. A grateful mind is attracted only by a sense of the beauty of
its purpose. Do you wish to know this to be so, and that it is not
bribed by ideas of profit? There are two classes of grateful men: a
man is called grateful who has made some return for what he
received; this man may very possibly display himself in this
character, he has something to boast of, to refer to. We also call
a man grateful who receives a benefit with goodwill, and owes it to
his benefactor with goodwill; yet this man's gratitude lies
concealed within his own mind. What profit can accrue to him from
this latent feeling? yet this man, even though he is not able to do
anything more than this, is grateful; he loves his benefactor, he
feels his debt to him, he longs to repay his kindness; whatever
else you may find wanting, there is nothing wanting in the man. He
is like a workman who has not the tools necessary for the practice