received from him merely life?

XXXIV. "But," says our opponent, "whatever you do, whatever you are
able to give to your father, is part of his benefit bestowed upon
you." So it is the benefit of my teacher that I have become
proficient in liberal studies; yet we pass on from those who taught
them to us, at any rate from those who taught us the alphabet; and
although no one can learn anything without them, yet it does not
follow that whatsoever success one subsequently obtains, one is
still inferior to those teachers. There is a great difference
between the beginning of a thing and its final development; the
beginning is not equal to the thing at its greatest, merely upon
the ground that, without the beginning, it could never have become
so great.

XXXV. It is now time for me to bring forth something, so to speak,
from my own mint. So long as there is something better than the
benefit which a man bestows, he may be outdone. A father gives life
to his son; there is something better than life; therefore a father
may be outdone, because there is something better than the benefit
which he has bestowed. Still further, he who has given any one his
life, if he be more than once saved from peril of death by him, has
received a greater benefit than he bestowed. Now, a father has
given life to his son: if, therefore, he be more than once saved
from peril by his son, he can receive a greater benefit than he
gave. A benefit becomes greater to the receiver in proportion to
his need of it. Now he who is alive needs life more than he who has
not been born, seeing that such a one can have no need at all;
consequently a father, if his life is saved by his son, receives a
greater benefit than his son received from him by being born. It is