the evil which they intended into good. Do you suppose that I am
indebted to a man who strikes my enemy with a blow which he aimed
at me, who would have injured me had he not missed his mark? It
often happens that by openly perjuring himself a man makes even
trustworthy witnesses disbelieved, and renders his intended victim
an object of compassion, as though he were being ruined by a
conspiracy. Some have been saved by the very power which was
exerted to crush them, and judges who would have condemned a man by
law, have refused to condemn him by favour. Yet they did not confer
a benefit upon the accused, although they rendered him a service,
because we must consider at what the dart was aimed, not what it
hits, and a benefit is distinguished from an injury not by its
result, but by the spirit in which it was meant. By contradicting
himself, by irritating the judge by his arrogance, or by rashly
allowing his whole case to depend upon the testimony of one
witness, my opponent may have saved my cause. I do not consider
whether his mistakes benefited me or not, for he wished me ill.

IX. In order that I may be grateful, I must wish to do what my
benefactor must have wished in order that he might bestow a
benefit. Can anything be more unjust than to bear a grudge against
a person who may have trodden upon one's foot in a crowd, or
splashed one, or pushed one the way which one did not wish to go?
Yet it was by his act that we were injured, and we only refrain
from complaining of him, because he did not know what he was doing.
The same reason makes it possible for men to do us good without
conferring benefits upon us, or to harm us without doing us wrong,
because it is intention which distinguishes our friends from our
enemies. How many have been saved from service in the army by
sickness! Some men have been saved from sharing the fall of their