On what is held in trust

This is Marcus arguing with himself against a tempting piece of logic: that a good deed should be paid back, that virtue is a loan expecting interest. He rejects it. The reward for a just act, he insists, is not gratitude or return but the act itself, already complete the moment it is done. He wrote this to a man with absolute power, who could have taken anything he wanted and called it his by right. The whole force of the passage is that some things are not ours to keep, and holding them serves no one, least of all the holder.

This week a museum in Louisville handed back twenty-four objects it had kept for decades. Among the two dozen artifacts involved in the repatriation were three sacred objects: a Sundance rattle, a beaded turtle amulet and a beaded pipe bag. "Family members can now come back and say, 'wow, my great grandpa made this,'" an Arapaho representative said. A sacred rattle behind glass is a contradiction: an object made to be sounded, silenced. Returning it cost the museum a possession and restored the thing's actual purpose. That is Marcus's point made physical.