eir inheritance in the most shameful of all ways, by the kitchen; at
another, excessive care for the body, and a devotion to personal beauty
which implies ugliness of mind; at another time, injudiciously granted
liberty will show itself in wanton recklessness and defiance of
authority; sometimes there will be a reign of cruelty both in public
and private, and the madness of the civil wars will come upon us, which
destroy all that is holy and inviolable. Sometimes even drunkenness will
be held in honour, and it will be a virtue to swallow most wine. Vices
do not lie in wait for us in one place alone, but hover around us in
changeful forms, sometimes even at variance one with another, so that
in turn they win and lose the field; yet we shall always be obliged to
pronounce the same verdict upon ourselves, that we are and always were
evil, and, I unwillingly add, that we always shall be. There always will
be homicides, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, ravishers, sacrilegious,
traitors: worse than all these is the ungrateful man, except we consider
that all these crimes flow from ingratitude, without which hardly any
great wickedness has ever grown to full stature. Be sure that you guard
against this as the greatest of crimes in yourself, but pardon it as the
least of crimes in another. For all the injury which you suffer is this:
you have lost the subject-matter of a benefit, not the benefit itself,
for you possess unimpaired the best part of it, in that you have given
it. Though we ought to be careful to bestow our benefits by preference
upon those who are likely to show us gratitude for them, yet we must
sometimes do what we have little hope will turn out well, and bestow
benefits upon those who we not only think will prove ungrateful, but who
we know have been so. For instance, if I should be able to save a
man's children from a great danger with no risk to myself, I should not
hesitate to do so. If a man be worthy I would defend him even with my
blood, and would share his perils; if he be unworthy, and yet by
merely crying for help I can rescue him from robbers, I would without
reluctance raise the shout which would save a fellow-creature.

XI. The next point to be defined is, what kind of benefits are to be
given, and in what manner. First let us give what is necessary, next
what is useful, and then what is pleasant, provided that they be
lasting. We must begin with what is necessary, for those things which
support life af