benefits have a harsh and forbidding appearance, such as cutting or
burning to cure disease, or confining with chains. We must not
consider whether a man is grieved at receiving a benefit, but
whether he ought to rejoice: a coin is not bad because it is
refused by a savage who is unacquainted with its proper stamp. A
man receives a benefit even though he hates what is done, provided
that it does him good, and that the giver bestowed it in order to
do him good. It makes no difference if he receives a good thing in
a bad spirit. Consider the converse of this. Suppose that a man
hates his brother, though it is to his advantage to have a brother,
and I kill this brother, this is not a benefit, though he may say
that it is, and be glad of it. Our most artful enemies are those
whom we thank for the wrongs which they do us.

"I understand; a thing which does good is a benefit, a thing which
does harm is not a benefit. Now I will suggest to you an act which
neither does good nor harm, and yet is a benefit. Suppose that I
find the corpse of some one's father in a wilderness, and bury it,
then I certainly have done him no good, for what difference could
it make to him in what manner his body decayed? Nor have I done any
good to his son, for what advantage does he gain by my act?" I will
tell you what he gains. He has by my means performed a solemn and
necessary rite; I have performed a service for his father which he
would have wished, nay, which it would have been his duty to have
performed himself. Yet this act is not a benefit, if I merely
yielded to those feelings of pity and kindliness which would make
me bury any corpse whatever, but only if I recognized this body,
and buried it, with the thought in my mind that I was doing this
service to the son; but, by merely throwing earth over a dead
stranger, I lay no one under an obligation for an act performed on