VII. Many arguments occur to me which prove that this vice ought
not to come under the action of the law. First of all, the best
part of a benefit is lost if the benefit can be sued for at law, as
in the case of a loan, or of letting and hiring. Indeed, the finest
part of a benefit is that we have given it without considering
whether we shall lose it or not, that we have left all this to the
free choice of him who receives it: if I call him before a judge,
it begins to be not a benefit, but a loan. Next, though it is a
most honourable thing to show gratitude, it ceases to be honourable
if it be forced, for in that case no one will praise a grateful man
any more than he praises him who restores the money which was
deposited in his keeping, or who pays what he borrowed without the
intervention of a judge. We should therefore spoil the two finest
things in human life,--a grateful man and a beneficent man; for
what is there admirable in one who does not give but merely lends a
benefit, or in one who repays it, not because he wishes, but
because he is forced to do so? There is no credit in being
grateful, unless it is safe to be ungrateful. Besides this, all the
courts would hardly be enough for the action of this one law. Who
would not plead under it? Who would not be pleaded against? for
every one exalts his own merits, every one magnifies even the
smallest matters which he has bestowed upon another. Besides this,
those things which form the subject of a judicial inquiry can be
distinctly defined, and cannot afford unlimited licence to the
judge; wherefore a good cause is in a better position if it before
a judge than before an arbitrator, because the words of the law tie
down a judge and define certain limits beyond which he may not
pass, whereas the conscience of an arbitrator is free and not
fettered by any rules, so that he can either give or take away,