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12In the second place, this advantage is not without complications, as people think; for a ruler cannot possibly satisfy all who ask for favours. Those, namely, who think they ought to receive some gift from the sovereign are practically all mankind, even though no favour is due to them at the moment; 2for every one naturally thinks well of himself and wishes to enjoy some benefit at the hands of him who is able to bestow it. But the benefits which can be given them,—I mean titles and offices and sometimes money,—will be found very easy to count when compared with the vast number of the applicants. This being so, greater hostility will inevitably be felt toward the monarch by those who fail to get what they want, than friendliness by those who obtain their desires. 3For the latter take what they receive as due them and think there is no particular reason for being grateful to the giver, since they are getting no more than they expected; besides, they actually shrink from showing gratitude for fear they may thereby give evidence of their being unworthy of the kindness done them. 4The others, when they are disappointed in their hopes, are aggrieved for two reasons: in the first place, they feel that they are being robbed of what belongs to them, for invariably men think they already possess whatever they set their hearts upon; and, in the second place, they feel that, if they are not indignant at their failure to obtain whatever they expect to get, they are actually acknowledging some shortcoming on their own part. 5The reason for all this is, of course, that the ruler who bestows such gifts in the right way obviously makes it his first business to weigh well the merits of each person, and thus he honours some and passes others by, with the result that, in consequence of his decision, those who are honoured have a further reason for elation, while those who are passed by feel a new resentment, each class being moved by their own consciousness of their respective merits. 6If, however, a ruler tries to avoid this result and decides to award these honours capriciously, he will fail utterly. For the base, finding themselves honoured contrary to their deserts, would become worse, concluding that they were either being actually commended as good or at any rate were being courted as formidable; and the upright, seeing that they were securing no greater consideration than the base but were being regarded as being merely on an equality with them, 7would be more vexed at being reduced to the level of the others than pleased at being thought worthy of some honour themselves, and consequently would abandon their cultivation of the higher principles of conduct and become zealous in the pursuit of the baser. And thus the result even of the distribution of honours would be this: those who bestowed them would reap no benefit from them and those who received them would become demoralized. Hence this advantage, which some would find the most attractive in monarchies, proves in your case a most difficult problem to deal with.
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