which both bestows pleasure and gains it by bestowing it, and which
does its office by natural and spontaneous impulse. It is not,
therefore, the thing which is done or given, but the spirit in
which it is done or given, that must be considered, because a
benefit exists, not in that which is done or given, but in the mind
of the doer or giver. How great the distinction between them is,
you may perceive from this, that while a benefit is necessarily
good, yet that which is done or given is neither good nor bad. The
spirit in which they are given can exalt small things, can glorify
mean ones, and can discredit great and precious ones; the objects
themselves which are sought after have a neutral nature, neither
good nor bad; all depends upon the direction given them by the
guiding spirit from which things receive their shape. That which is
paid or handed over is not the benefit itself, just as the honour
which we pay to the gods lies not in the victims themselves,
although they be fat and glittering with gold, [Footnote: Alluding
to the practice of gilding the horns of the victims.] but in the
pure and holy feelings of the worshippers.

Thus good men are religious, though their offering be meal and
their vessels of earthenware; whilst bad men will not escape from
their impiety, though they pour the blood of many victims upon the
altars.

VII. If benefits consisted of things, and not of the wish to
benefit, then the more things we received the greater the benefit
would be. But this is not true, for sometimes we feel more
gratitude to one who gives us trifles nobly, who, like Virgil's
poor old soldier, "holds himself as rich as kings," if he has given
us ever so little with a good will a man who forgets his own need