Among these primitive duties, which cost him that fulfills them but little, the ancients put in the first rank _hospitality_. It is in fact a virtue of primitive times which exists especially among barbarous and savage peoples. In the poems of Homer we see to what degree the guest was held sacred; it is still so among the Arabs and the Indians of America. This virtue, on the contrary, seems to have disappeared with civilization. The reason of it is that among barbarous populations, where security is feeble, it was the point of honor which guaranteed the security of strangers. But as civilization becomes more complicated, as traveling increases, and security becomes greater, mercenary hospitality takes the place of free and private hospitality. Nevertheless, there can always remain some occasion for this primitive virtue in places isolated and separated from the great centres: this, for example, can still be seen in our days in the great wastes of America and Australia. =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.