Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers

An Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving

Seneca, James S. Romm

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691211367
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

Timeless wisdom on generosity and gratitude from the great Stoic philosopher Seneca To give and receive well may be the most human thing you can do—but it is also the closest you can come to divinity. So argues the great Roman Stoic thinker Seneca (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) in his longest and most searching moral treatise, "On Benefits" ( De Beneficiis ). James Romm's splendid new translation of essential selections from this work conveys the heart of Seneca's argument that generosity and gratitude are among the most important of all virtues.For Seneca, the impulse to give to others lies at the very foundation of society; without it, we are helpless creatures, worse than wild beasts. But generosity did not arise randomly or by chance. Seneca sees it as part of our desire to emulate the gods, whose creation of the earth and heavens stands as the greatest gift of all. Seneca's soaring prose captures his wonder at that gift, and expresses a profound sense of gratitude that will inspire today's readers.Complete with an enlightening introduction and the original Latin on facing pages, How to Give is a timeless guide to the profound significance of true generosity.

ON BENEFITS

As with all his works, Seneca addressed On Benefits to a single friend or family member—in this case, a man named Aebutius Liberalis, about whom almost nothing is known. Perhaps his name, which includes the word liberalis, “generous,” partly explains why Seneca directed this essay to him. In any case, the idea of a single addressee is largely a fictional conceit, as Seneca clearly wanted to be read widely by the general public.

Seneca begins his discussion of giving and receiving with a loose collection of introductory thoughts, many of which touch on his central themes: giving is not like lending, since no return should be expected or demanded; gratitude is essential, but ingratitude should be pardoned; intention and attitude are central aspects of generosity; we should emulate the gods in our open-handedness. After this sweeping overview, Seneca gets down to a more rigorous set of teachings in chapter 5 (p. 177).

[1.1]¹ Among many and various mistakes made by those who live heedlessly and recklessly, my most excellent Liberalis, I can name few things more egregious than this: We don’t know how to give and receive. The result is that the gifts we have given badly become total losses. By the time we complain about not being repaid, it’s too late; they were already lost at the moment they were given. And it’s hardly a surprise that among all our greatest and most numerous vices, none are more common than those that arise from an ungrateful heart.² The causes of this, as I see it, are multiple.

First, we don’t select worthy recipients when we give. By contrast, when we set out to lend,³ we look into the estate and lifestyle of the borrower; when planting, we don’t scatter seeds onto worn-out, sterile soil. Yet we strew our gifts without any discernment, rather than give them.

I couldn’t easily say whether it’s worse to reject what one has received or demand back what one has given. The nature of this kind of transaction is that we must accept only that which is freely offered. A bankruptcy is shameful if one seeks to clear one’s accounts only by financial means and not by good intent. It’s those who feel indebted who’ve repaid.

The fault lies not only in those who won’t even admit to a sense of gratitude, but also in ourselves. We find many ingrates, but we make more; we are sometimes harshly demanding and critical, sometimes flighty and regretful of our gift just after we give it, sometimes quarrelsome and prone to pick fights over tiny things. Thus, we ruin all sense of gratitude, not just after we give but even while we are giving.

Who among us was ever content to respond to a request made casually or only once? Who, when supposing that something was being asked of him, did not knit the brow, turn away the face, pretend to be busy, and, with long conversations that strive never to find an end, deprive the asker of the chance to make a request, dodging pressing needs by diverse ploys? Or, when backed into a corner, who did not delay (which is only a cowardly form of refusal), or promise to do it, but grudgingly, with furrowed brow, with bitter words barely forced out between clenched teeth? But no one willingly repays what was not received but extorted.

Can anyone be grateful when facing one who haughtily did him a favor or tossed him a gift, or angrily shoved it at him, or gave it wearily, simply to be rid of the bother? It’s wrong to think that someone’s going to give back after being worn down by delay and tortured by anticipation. Gifts and good deeds are returned in the same spirit in which they’re given, and so must not be given heedlessly. Those who get something given thoughtlessly think their debt is only to themselves. And gifts must not be given tardily: In every kind of service, we value the willingness of the giver, and those who delay will seem to be unwilling.

Gifts and good deeds must not be given with an edge of insult. It’s a pattern in human nature that injuries get deeper under our skin than boons; they take hold in our memory, while boons flow quickly away. What can we expect if we give offense while doing a good turn? Merely to be pardoned for such a gift would be gratitude enough.

[1.1.9] But the sheer proliferation of ingrates should not make us slow to be generous. First, as I said, we increase their number. Second, not even the immortal gods themselves are deterred from abundant and unceasing kindness by the impious people who neglect them. They follow their own natures; they give aid to all, even to those who are bad interpreters of their gifts. Let’s follow their lead, insofar as our human obtuseness allows. Let’s give, not lend out for profit. Those who think when they give about what they will get in return deserve to be cheated of that return.

“But let’s say things turn out poorly.”⁴ Our children and our spouses have often disappointed us, yet we still marry and raise them. Indeed, we’re so stubbornly tenacious, in defiance of experience, that we go back to war after a defeat or to the sea after a shipwreck. How much more fitting then to stay the course in giving!

If someone doesn’t give because he didn’t receive, then he only gave in order to receive; he supplies the ingrates—whose vice is to avoid giving back whenever possible—with just cause. How many are unworthy of the sunshine, yet the day still dawns! How many complain of being born into this world—yet Nature begets a new generation, and brings into being the same people who would prefer not to have been.

Here’s the mark of great and good hearts: To seek good deeds for their own sake, not for the profits that flow from them, and to look for good people even after meeting bad ones. What magnificence would there be in doing good for many, if none of them ever took advantage?

[1.2.3] Accountancy of good deeds is a simple matter: A certain amount is dispensed; if anything comes back, that’s a profit, but if not, it’s no loss. I gave for the purpose of giving. No one writes down good deeds on a ledger or calls them in by day and hour like a greedy collection agent. A good person never thinks of them, unless reminded by the one making return; to do otherwise is to make them into a loan. It’s a base kind of usury to treat a gift as an account payable. Whatever has happened in the case of prior gifts and good deeds, keep going, extend them to others. Better that these abide with the ungrateful, who might be made grateful at some point—by shame, by opportunity, or by imitation of their betters.

Don’t give up; carry through with your job, fulfill the part of a good person. Help this one with cash, that one with credit, another with influence, another with advice, another with healthful teachings. Even wild beasts can perceive the care of their keepers. No animal is so beyond taming that nurture does not soften it and turn it toward love of that which nurtures. Lions’ mouths are pulled open by their trainers without harm, and food brings the elephant’s wildness to slavish obedience; constant effort of devoted care wins over even those creatures who have no understanding or appreciation of the gifts. Someone’s ungrateful for today’s good deed? He won’t be for tomorrow’s. He forgot both? A third will call back the memory of those that have slipped away.

Those who are quick to think they have wasted good deeds will in fact waste them. But those who lean in, and add new good deeds to the first ones, will squeeze out gratitude from even a hard and oblivious heart. The beneficiaries won’t dare to lift their eyes in the face of so many good deeds; wherever they turn to escape their awareness, let them see you standing there. Besiege them with benefits.

[1.5] I must now explain the first of the things we have to learn—namely, what it is that we owe when someone’s given to us. Some think they owe the money they’ve received; others, the political office; others, the priesthood; others, the province. But these are only the markers of giving, not the gifts themselves. Gifts and good deeds can’t be touched by the hand; they’re enacted in the mind. Between the product of giving and the gift itself lies a huge gulf. The gift is not the gold, or the silver, or any of those things we think most important; it’s the very intent of the one who gives.

It’s the ignorant who take note only of those things that meet their eyes, that can be passed down and owned, while giving little weight to that which is in fact dear and precious. The things we hold in our hands and see with our eyes, the things our desire fastens on, are frail; both Fortune and human wrongs can take them away. But a gift or good deed endures, even after the object, the vehicle through which it was given,⁵ has perished. It’s a virtuous act. No power can render it meaningless.

[1.6] What then are gifts and good deeds? They’re generous acts, done in an eager and voluntary spirit, that bring joy, and also reap joy, from the act of giving. It doesn’t matter what’s done or given, but the attitude, since the gift is not the thing done or given, but lies in the heart of the one who does or gives. You can understand the huge difference between these things from this: A gift or good deed is certainly good, but the thing that’s given or done is neither good nor bad. It’s the heart that elevates little things, brightens dingy things, or casts into dishonor what’s thought to be great and valuable. The objects of our yearning are in themselves neutral, neither good nor bad in essence. It matters in what direction the Guiding Principle, from which things take their form, directs them. The gift is not the thing counted or handed over, just as it’s not the sacrificial animals, even if they’re fat and gleaming with gold, that form the honor paid to the gods, but rather the righteous and pious intent of worshipers. The good fulfill religious duties with grain or a bowl of meal; the bad cannot flee impiety, though they spill buckets of blood on the altars with their sacrifices.

If gifts and good deeds consisted in things rather than in the intent to do them, they’d be greater in proportion to the size of what we receive. But it’s not so. Often the ones who put us more in their debt are those who gave little but with a great spirit, who “in their heart made their wealth like that of kings,”⁶ who handed out a small amount but did so gladly, who forgot their own poverty while showing concern for mine, who had not only the intention but the desire to lend help, who felt that they got a gift when they gave one, who gave it with no thought of ever getting it back, or who got it back with no thought of ever having given it, who both sought out, then grabbed, the chance to help. Conversely, those “gifts” are in fact ungenerous, even if they seem great in appearance and substance, if they were either wrung from the givers or dropped thoughtlessly. More welcome by far is what comes not from a full but a willing hand. “They gave me only a little, but they were not able to give more. What he gave was huge, but he took his time, delayed, and when he gave, he sighed; he gave it in a superior manner, he spread the word of his gift, and did not seek to please the one to whom he gave. His gift was not to me, but to his own ostentation.”

[1.11] Let’s take this topic next: What gifts should be given, and how? First, let’s give what’s needed; then, what’s useful; third, what’s pleasing, especially things that will endure. We must begin however with what’s needed, for we conceive differently of things that preserve life than of those that embellish it or provide for it. Things that we can easily do without, we can size up with a discriminating eye, and can say about them: “Take it back, I don’t want it; I’m content with what I have.” (Sometimes it’s pleasing not only to give back but also to toss far from you the things you’ve received.)

From the things that are necessary, top priority goes to those without which we can’t live; second, to those without which we ought not; third, [to] those without which we wouldn’t want to. The first category includes things of this sort: being rescued from the hands of enemies, or from the wrath of a despot, or from proscription,⁷ or from other dangers, varied and obscure, that assail human life. [1.11.4] The second includes things without which we can survive, but in such a way that death would be preferable, such as freedom, virtue, and a sound mind. Next are the things that we hold dear by reason of closeness, blood relation, familiarity, and long-standing custom, such as children, spouses, household gods, and other things to which the heart is so attached that we’d regard it as more grave to be separated from these than from life.

Next come the useful things, diverse and wide-ranging in their content. Here we’ll place money—not in excess, but enough for a healthful way of life; here, honor, and advancement toward higher station (for those who strive in that direction), since nothing is more useful than to become useful to oneself.

The gifts and good deeds that remain come out of an overflowing prosperity, such as makes people spoiled. In this category, we’ll seek to make our gifts pleasing by timely presentation and by avoiding the commonplace, by giving things that few people own (few at least in this era or in this manner), or things that may not be precious in themselves but become so because of the time, or place, they were given.

We should think about what we can give that will bring most pleasure in future, what the owners will often bump into so that we’ll be in their thoughts every time they’re in its presence. We’ll at least be careful not to send any useless gifts, such as hunting gear to a woman⁸ or an old man, or books to a simpleton, or nets⁹ to a scholar immersed in studies. On the other hand, we’ll take equal care, if we want to send pleasing things, not to send something that will rebuke a person’s failings, such as wine to a drunkard, or medicines to the sickly. If it acknowledges a vice of the recipient, it starts to be a curse and not a gift.

In the second book of On Benefits, Seneca expands on the point made in book 1, that the attitude with which one gives is far more important than the gift itself. He extends this idea to include receiving as well as giving, commencing a long inquiry, continuing throughout the work, into the importance of gratitude.

[2.1] Let us give in the same spirit with which we would want to receive—above all, generously, promptly, with no hesitation.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• On Benefits
• Epistle 81
• Notes