within the mind of one.

X. A benefit means the affording of something useful, and the word
AFFORDING implies other persons. Would not a man be thought mad if
he said that he had sold something to himself, because selling
means alienation, and the transferring of a thing and of one's
rights in that thing to another person? Yet giving, like selling
anything, consists in making it pass away from you, handing over
what you yourself once owned into the keeping of some one else.

If this be so, no one ever gave himself a benefit, because no one
gives to himself; if not, two opposites coalesce, so that it
becomes the same thing to give and to receive. Yet there is a great
difference between giving and receiving; how should there not be,
seeing that these words are the converse of one another? Still, if
any one can give himself a benefit, there can be no difference
between giving and receiving. I said a little before that some
words apply only to other persons, and are so constituted that
their whole meaning lies apart from ourselves; for instance, I am a
brother, but a brother of some other man, for no one is his own
brother; I am an equal, but equal to somebody else, for who is
equal to himself? A thing which is compared to another thing is
unintelligible without that other thing; a thing which is joined to
something else does not exist apart from it; so that which is given
does not exist without the other person, nor can a benefit have any
existence without another person. This is clear from the very
phrase which describes it, 'to do good,' yet no one does good to
himself, any more than he favours himself or is on his own side. I
might enlarge further upon this subject and give many examples. Why
should benefits not be included among those acts which require two