BOOK IV. Whether the bestowal of benefits and the return of gratitude for them are desirable objects in themselves? Does God bestow benefits?--How to choose the man to be benefited--We ought not to look for any return--True gratitude--Of keeping one's promise--Philip and the soldier--Zeno BOOK V. Of being worsted in a contest of benefits--Socrates and Archelaus--Whether a man can be grateful to himself, or can bestow a benefit upon himself--Examples of ingratitude--Dialogue on ingratitude--Whether one should remind one's friends of what one has done for them--Caesar and the soldier--Tiberius. BOOK VI. Whether a benefit can be taken from one by force--Benefits depend upon thought--We are not grateful for the advantages which we receive from inanimate Nature, or from dumb animals--In order to lay me under an obligation you must benefit me intentionally--Cleanthes's story of the two slaves--Of benefits given in a mercenary spirit--Physicians and teachers bestow enormous benefits, yet are sufficiently paid by a moderate fee--Plato and the ferryman--Are we under an obligation to the sun and moon?--Ought we to wish that evil may befall our benefactors, in order that we may show our gratitude by helping them? BOOK VII. The cynic Demetrius--his rules of conduct--Of the truly wise man--Whether one who has done everything in his power to return a benefit has returned it--Ought one to return a benefit to a bad man?--The Pythagorean, and the shoemaker--How one ought to bear with the ungrateful. L. A. SENECA ON BENEFITS. DEDICATED TO AEBUTIUS LIBERALIS. BOOK I. I.