always a proof of the intention of the giver; neither
does the benefit which may accrue from it prove that it came from the
hands of a benefactor. For, in short, what debauchery, what avarice,
what crime among men is there which does not owe its birth to thought
and reflection, that is, to reason? For all opinion is reason: right
reason, if men's thoughts are conformable to truth; wrong reason, if
they are not. The Gods only give us the mere faculty of reason, if we
have any; the use or abuse of it depends entirely upon ourselves; so
that the comparison is not just between the present of reason given us
by the Gods, and a patrimony left to a son by his father; for, after
all, if the injury of mankind had been the end proposed by the Gods,
what could they have given them more pernicious than reason? for what
seed could there be of injustice, intemperance, and cowardice, if
reason were not laid as the foundation of these vices?

XXIX. I mentioned just now Medea and Atreus, persons celebrated in
heroic poems, who had used this reason only for the contrivance and
practice of the most flagitious crimes; but even the trifling
characters which appear in comedies supply us with the like instances
of this reasoning faculty; for example, does not he, in the Eunuch,
reason with some subtlety?--

What, then, must I resolve upon?
She turn'd me out-of-doors; she sends for me back again;
Shall I go? no, not if she were to beg it of me.

Another, in the Twins, making no scruple of opposing a received maxim,
after the manner of the Academics, asserts that when a man is in love
and in want, it is pleasant

To have a father covetous, crabbed, and passionate,
Who has no love or affection for his children.

This unaccountable opinion he strengthens thus:

You may defraud him of his profits, or forge letters in his name,
Or fright him by your servant into compliance;
And what you take from such an old hunks,
How much more pleasantly do you spend it!

On the contrary, he says that an easy, generous father is an
inconvenience to a son in love; for, says he,

I can't tell how to abuse so good, so prudent a parent,
Who always foreruns my desires, and meets me purse in hand,
To support me in my pleasures: this easy goodness and generosity
Quite defeat all my frauds, tricks, and stratagems.[273]

What are these frauds, tricks, and stratagems but the effects of
reason? O excellent gift