“The instances you offer are of a different color, for he who cultivates my field, gives a benefit, not to the field, but to me; and he who props up my house — to keep it from falling, bestows a benefit on me, for the house itself is without feeling; because it has none, he makes me his debtor; and he who cultivates my field, wishes to do a service, not to it, but to me. I should say the same of the slave, he is a chattel of mine, it is to my advantage to have his life saved; therefore the debt is mine instead of his. But my son is himself capable of receiving a benefit; he, therefore, receives it, while I merely rejoice, and, though I am nearly concerned, I am not placed under obligation by it.”
Nevertheless I should like you, who suppose that you are under no obligation, to answer me this. A father is concerned in the good health, the happiness, the inheritance of his son; he is going to be made more happy if he keeps his son alive, more unhappy if he has lost him. What, then? If anyone is made happier by me, if he is freed from the danger of the greatest unhappiness, does he not receive a benefit?
“No,” you answer, “for there are some things that, though they are conferred upon others, pass on to us; but, in each case, the thing ought to be required of the one upon whom it was conferred, just as, in the case of a loan, money is sought from the one to whom it was lent, although it may by some means have come into my hands. There is no benefit whose advantage does not extend to those who are nearest to the recipient, sometimes even to those who are far removed; the question is, not whither did the benefit pass from the one to whom it was given, but where was it first placed. You must be repaid by the real debtor, the one who first received it.”
What, then? I beg of you, do you not say to me: “You have given me the life of my son, and, if he had perished, I could not have survived him”? Do you not owe a benefit in return for the life of one whose safety you value above your own? Besides, when I have saved your son’s life, you fall upon your knees, you pay vows to the gods just as if your own life had been saved; your lips utter these words: “Whether you have saved my own life is to me of no concern; you have saved both our lives — nay, rather, mine.” Why do you say this if you do not receive a benefit?
“Because, also, if my son were to obtain a loan of money, I should pay his creditor, yet should not for that reason be indebted to him; because also, if my son should be caught in adultery, I should blush, yet should not for that reason become an adulterer. I say that I am indebted to you for my son’s life, not because I really am, but because I wish to constitute myself your debtor of my own free will. But his safety has brought to me the greatest possible pleasure, the greatest possible advantage, and I have escaped the heaviest of all blows, the loss of a child. The question is now, not whether you have been of service to me, but whether you have given me a benefit; for a dumb animal, or a stone, or a plant, can be of service, and yet they cannot give a benefit, for a benefit is never given without an act of the will. But you wish to give, not to the father, but to the son, and sometimes you do not even know the father. Therefore, when you have said: ‘Have I not, then, given a benefit to the father by saving the life of his son?’ you must raise the counter-question: ‘Have I, then, given a benefit to the father, whom I do not know, of whom I had no thought?’ And what if, as will sometimes happen, you hate the father, yet save the life of his son? Will you be considered to have given a benefit to one to whom, at the very time that you gave it, you had the greatest hostility?”
But, to lay aside the bickering of dialogue, and to reply, as it were, judicially, I should say that the purpose of the giver must be considered; he gave the benefit to the one to whom he wished it to be given. If he did it as a compliment to the father, then the father received the benefit; if, as a service to the son, the father is placed under no obligation by the benefit conferred upon the son, even if he is pleased by it. If, however, he gets the opportunity, he will himself wish to bestow something, not that he feels the necessity of repaying, but that he finds an excuse for offering a service. Repayment of the benefit must not be sought from the father; if he does a generous act because of it, he is, not grateful, but just. For there can be no end to it — if I am giving a benefit to my friend’s father, I am giving it also to his mother, his grandfather, his uncle, his children, his relatives, his friends, his slaves, his country. Where, then, does a benefit begin to stop? For there enters in the endless sorites,25 to which it is difficult to set any limit, for it grows little by little, and never stops growing.