him who holds you back when you would rush into crime? of him who
strikes the sword from the hands of the suicide? of him who by his
power of consolation brings back to the duties of life one who was
plunged in grief, and eager to follow those whom he had lost? of
him who sits at the bedside of the sick man, and who, when health
and recovery depend upon seizing the right moment, administers food
in due season, stimulates the failing veins with wine, or calls in
the physician to the dying man? Who can estimate the value of such
services as these? who can bid us weigh dissimilar benefits one
with another? "I gave you a house," says one. Yes, but I forewarned
you that your own house would come down upon your head. "I gave you
an estate," says he. True, but I gave a plank to you when
shipwrecked. "I fought for you and received wounds for you," says
another. But I saved your life by keeping silence. Since a benefit
is both given and returned differently by different people, it is
hard to make them balance.

X. Besides this, no day is appointed for repayment of a benefit, as
there is for borrowed money; consequently he who has not yet repaid
a benefit may do so hereafter: for tell me, pray, within what time
a man is to be declared ungrateful? The greatest benefits cannot be
proved by evidence; they often lurk in the silent consciousness of
two men only; are we to introduce the rule of not bestowing
benefits without witnesses? Next, what punishment are we to appoint
for the ungrateful? is there to be one only for all, though the
benefits which they have received are different? or should the
punishment be varying, greater or less according to the benefit
which each has received? Are our valuations to be restricted to
pecuniary fines? what are we to do, seeing that in some cases the
benefit conferred is life, and things dearer than life? What