67. Benefactions—Duties of the benefactor.—The foregoing actions, however praiseworthy they may be, are too simple and too easy to be presented as real acts of benevolence. This term is reserved for the more difficult actions, which may cost us some real sacrifices more or less great, and which, moreover, are important services. These are what are called benefactions.
Seneca, in his Treatise on benefactions, has fixed the principles of benevolence:
1. Benefaction consists especially in the feeling which accompanies it, rather than in the thing given.
“What is a benefaction?” he asks; “it is an act of benevolence which procures joy to him who is the object of it and to him who exercises it: it is a voluntary and spontaneous act. It is then not at the thing done and given that we must look, but at the intention, because the benefaction does not consist in the gift or in the action, but in the disposition of him who gives. The proof of this difference is that the benefaction is always a good, whilst the thing done or given is neither a good nor an evil. The benefaction is then not the money that is counted out to you, the present that is made you; no more than the worship of the gods consists in its fattest victims, but in the uprightness and piety of their worshipers.
“One prefers a hand that opens easily to one that gives largely. He has done little for me, but he could not do any more. That other has given much, but he hesitated, he delayed, he groaned in giving, he gave with ostentation; he proclaimed his good deed; he did not care to please him whom he obliged: it is not to me he gave, it is to his vanity.” (I., vi.)
2. One should do good without caring about ingrates.
“What is after all the wrong the ingrate does you? You have lost your good deed. But there remains to you the most precious part of it: the merit of having done it. There are services one should learn how to render without hope of returns, to people one may presume will be ungrateful, and whom one even knows to have been so. If, for example, I can save from a great peril the children of one who has been ungrateful to me, I shall not hesitate to do so.” (I., x.)
3. There must be degrees in benefactions, and, having to choose, one must first give the necessary, then the useful, then the agreeable.
“The necessary,” says Seneca, “is divided into three classes: the first comprises the things without which one cannot live (for example, to rescue a man from the sword of the enemy, from the rage of tyrants, from proscription, etc.); the second, those without which one should not live (such as liberty, honor, virtue); finally (3d class), our children, our wives, our household gods are objects dearer to us than life.—After the necessary comes the useful; it may be subdivided into a great number of species; it comprises money, honors, and above all the progress in the science of virtue.—Finally come the agreeable things which are innumerable.... Let us seek things which please because they are to the purpose; that are not common; that recall the donor; let us above all beware of useless presents.” (I., xi.)
4. The manner of granting a benefit is more important than the benefit itself.