expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person.  It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning, from one who has had the ill luck to be served by you.  It is a very onerous business,[467] this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap.  A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I admire in the Buddhist,[468] who never thanks, and who says, “Do not flatter your benefactors.”

5.  The reason of these discords I conceive to be, that there is no commensurability between a man and any gift.  You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person.  After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity.  The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also.  Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.  Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation.  We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.  But rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all people.

6.  I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not affect to prescribe.  Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently.  There are persons from whom we always expect fairy tokens; let us not cease to expect them.  This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal rules.  For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold.  The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the will, but in fate.  I find that I am not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands.  No services are of any value, but only likeness.  When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick—­no more.  They eat your service like apples, and leave you out.  But love them, and they feel for you, and delight in you all the time.

NATURE[469]

    The rounded world is fair to see,
    Nine times folded in mystery: 
    Though baffled seers cannot impart
    The secret of its laboring heart,
    Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast,
    And all is clear from east to west. 
    Spirit that lurks each form within
    Beckons to spirit of its kin;
    Self-kindled every atom glows,
    And hints the future which it owes.