On Gratitude

Gratitude is one of the most fundamental and complex of the virtues, undergirding and overlapping with many of the others. Cicero once characterized it as “the mother of all the virtues.” Although precision of definition in such matters is neither possible nor desirable—some things being better investigated by what Pascal called an esprit de finesse rather than an esprit de géométrie—there is need for at least a rough idea of.