annoyance, and a source of misery. Thus the most prosperous and the
richest men have the most trouble; and the more property they have
to perplex them, the less likely they are to find out what they
really are. Nothing, therefore, can reach bad men which would do
them good; nay, nothing which would not do them harm. They change
whatever falls to their lot into their own evil nature; and things
which elsewhere would, if given to better men, be both beautiful
and profitable, are ruinous to them. They cannot, therefore, bestow
benefits, because no one can give what he does not possess, and,
therefore, they lack the pleasure of doing good to others.

XIII. But, though this be so, yet even a bad man can receive some
things which resemble benefits, and he will be ungrateful if he
does not return them. There are good things belonging to the mind,
to the body, and to fortune. A fool or a bad man is debarred from
the first--those, that is, of the mind; but he is admitted to a
share in the two latter, and, if he does not return them, he is
ungrateful. Nor does this follow from our (Stoic) system alone the
Peripatetics, also, who widely extend the boundaries of human
happiness, declare that trifling benefits reach bad men, and that
he who does not return them is ungrateful. We therefore do not
agree that things which do not tend to improve the mind should be
called benefits, yet do not deny that these things are convenient
and desirable. Such things as these a bad man may bestow upon a
good man, or may receive from him--such, for example, as money,
clothes, public office, or life; and, if he makes no return for
these, he will come under the denomination of ungrateful. "But how
can you call a man ungrateful for not returning that which you say
is not a benefit?" Some things, on account of their similarity, are
included under the same designation, although they do not really