Treatises on Friendship and Old Age
consistent with honour and rectitude. Again, if a change in character
and aim takes place, as often happens, or if party politics produces an
alienation of feeling (I am now speaking, as I said a short time ago, of
ordinary friendships, not of those of the wise), we shall have to be on
our guard against appearing to embark upon active enmity while we only
mean to resign a friendship. For there can be nothing more discreditable
than to be at open war with a man with whom you have been intimate.
Scipio, as you are aware, had abandoned his friendship for Quintus
Pompeius on my account; and again, from differences of opinion in
politics, he became estranged from my colleague Metellus. In both cases
he acted with dignity and moderation, shewing that he was offended
indeed, but without rancour.
Our first object, then, should be to prevent a breach; our second, to
secure that, if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died
a natural rather than a violent death. Next, we should take care that
friendship is not converted into active hostility, from which flow
personal quarrels, abusive language, and angry recriminations. These
last, however, provided that they do not pass all reasonable limits
of forbearance, we ought to put up with, and, in compliment to an old
friendship, allow the party that inflicts the injury, not the one that
submits to it, to be in the wrong. Generally speaking, there is but one
way of securing and providing oneself against faults and inconveniences
of this sort--not to be too hasty in bestowing our affection, and not to
bestow it at all on unworthy objects.
Now, by "worthy of friendship" I mean those who have in themselves the
qualities which attract affection. This sort of man is rare; and indeed
all excellent things are rare; and nothing in the world is so hard to
find as a thing entirely and completely perfect of its kind. But most
people not only recognize nothing as good in our life unless it is
profitable, but look upon friends as so much stock, caring most for
those by whom they hope to make most profit. Accordingly they never
possess that most beautiful and most spontaneous friendship which must
be sought solely for itself without any ulterior object. They fail
also to learn from their own feelings the nature and the strength of
friendship. For every one loves himself, not for any reward which such
love may bring, but because he is dear to himself independently of
anything else. But unless this feeling is transferred to another, what
a real friend is will never be revealed; for he is, as it were, a
second self. But if we find these two instincts shewing themselves in
animals,--whether of the air or the sea or the land, whether wild or
tame,--first, a love of self, which in fact is born in everything that
lives alike; and, secondly, an eagerness to find and attach themselves
to other creatures of their own kind; and if this natural action is
accompanied by desire and by something resembling human love, how much
more must this be the case in man by the law of his nature? For man not
only loves himself, but seeks another whose spirit he may so blend with
his own as almost to make one being of two.
22. But most people unreasonably, not to speak of modesty, want such
a friend as they are unable to be themselves, and expect from their
friends what they do not themselves give. The fair course is first to be
good yourself, and then to look out for another of like character. It
is between such that the stability in friendship of which we have been
talking can be secured; when, that is to say, men who are united by
affection learn, first of all, to rule those passions which enslave
others, and in the next place to take delight in fair and equitable
conduct, to bear each other's burdens, never to ask each other for
anything inconsistent with virtue and rectitude, and not only to serve
and love but also to respect each other. I say "respect"; for if respect
is gone, friendship has lost its brightest jewel. And this shows the
mistake of those who imagine that friendship gives a privilege to
licentiousness and sin. Nature has given us friendship as the handmaid
of virtue, not as a partner in guilt: to the end that virtue, being
powerless when isolated to reach the highest objects, might succeed in
doing so in union and partnership with another. Those who enjoy in the
present, or have enjoyed in the past, or are destined to enjoy in the
future such a partnership as this, must be considered to have secured
the most excellent and auspicious combination for reaching nature's
highest good. This is the partnership, I say, which combines moral
rectitude, fame, peace of mind, serenity: all that men think desirable
because with them life is happy, but without them cannot be so. This
being our best and highest object, we must, if we desire to attain it,
devote ourselves to virtue; for without virtue we can obtain neither
friendship nor anything else desirable. In fact, if virtue be neglected,
those who imagine themselves to possess friends will find out their
error as soon as some grave disaster forces them to make trial of them.
Wherefore, I must again and again repeat, you must satisfy your judgment
before engaging your affections: not love first and judge afterwards. We
suffer from carelessness in many of our undertakings: in none more than
in selecting and cultivating our friends. We put the cart before the
horse, and shut the stable door when the steed is stolen, in defiance
of the old proverb. For, having mutually involved ourselves in a
long-standing intimacy or by actual obligations, all on a sudden some
cause of offence arises and we break off our friendships in full career.
23. It is this that makes such carelessness in a matter of supreme
importance all the more worthy of blame. I say "supreme importance,"
because friendship is the one thing about the utility of which everybody
with one accord is agreed. That is not the case in regard even to virtue
itself; for many people speak slightingly of virtue as though it were
mere puffing and self-glorification. Nor is it the case with riches.
Many look down on riches, being content with a little and taking
pleasure in poor fare and dress, And as to the political offices for
which some have a burning desire--how many entertain such a contempt
for them as to think nothing in the world more empty and trivial!
And so on with the rest; things desirable in the eyes of some are
regarded by very many as worthless. But of friendship all think alike to
a man, whether those have devoted themselves to politics, or those who
delight in science and philosophy, or those who follow a private way of
life and care for nothing but their own business, or those lastly who
have given themselves body and soul to sensuality--they all think, I
say, that without friendship life is no life, if they want some part
of it, at any rate, to be noble. For friendship, in one way or another,
penetrates into the lives of us all, and suffers no career to be
entirely free from its influence. Though a man be of so churlish and
unsociable a nature as to loathe and shun the company of mankind, as we
are told was the case with a certain Timon at Athens, yet even he cannot
refrain from seeking some one in whose hearing he may disgorge the
venom of his bitter temper. We should see this most clearly, if it were
possible that some god should carry us away from these haunts of men,
and place us somewhere in perfect solitude, and then should supply us in
abundance with everything necessary to our nature, and yet take from us
entirely the opportunity of looking upon a human being. Who could steel
himself to endure such a life? Who would not lose in his loneliness the
zest for all pleasures? And indeed this is the point of the observation
of, I think, Archytas of Tarentum. I have it third hand; men who were my
seniors told me that their seniors had told them. It was this: "If a man
could ascend to heaven and get a clear view of the natural order of
the universe, and the beauty of the heavenly bodies, that wonderful
spectacle would give him small pleasure, though nothing could be
conceived more delightful if he had but had some one to whom to tell
what he had seen." So true it is that nature abhors isolation, and ever
leans upon something as a stay and support; and this is found in its
most pleasing form in our closest friend.
24. But though Nature also declares by so many indications what her wish
and object and desire is, we yet in a manner turn a deaf ear and will
not hear her warnings. The intercourse between friends is varied and
complex, and it must often happen that causes of suspicion and offence
arise, which a wise man will sometimes avoid, at other times remove,
at others treat with indulgence. The one possible cause of offence
that must be faced is when the interests of your friend and your own
sincerity are at stake. For instance, it often happens that friends need
remonstrance and even reproof. When these are administered in a kindly
spirit they ought to be taken in good part. But somehow or other there
is truth in what my friend Terence says in his _Andria_:
Compliance gets us friends, plain speaking hate.
Plain speaking is a cause of trouble, if the result of it is resentment,
which is poison of friendship; but compliance is really the cause of
much more trouble, because by indulging his faults it lets a friend
plunge into headlong ruin. But the man who is most to blame is he who
resents plain speaking and allows flattery to egg him on to his ruin. On
this point, then, from first to last there is need of deliberation and
care. If we remonstrate, it should be without bitterness; if we reprove,
there should be no word of insult. In the matter of compliance (for I
am glad to adopt Terence's word), though there should be every courtesy,
yet that base kind which assists a man in vice should be far from us,
for it is unworthy of a free-born man, to say nothing of a friend. It is
one thing to live with a tyrant, another with a friend. But if a man's
ears are so closed to plain speaking that he cannot bear to hear the
truth from a friend, we may give him up in despair. This remark of
Cato's, as so many of his did, shews great acuteness: "There are people
who owe more to bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends:
the former often speak the truth, the latter never." Besides, it is a
strange paradox that the recipients of advice should feel no annoyance
where they ought to feel it, and yet feel so much where they ought not.
They are not at all vexed at having committed a fault, but very angry at
being reproved for it. On the contrary, they ought to be grieved at the
crime and glad of the correction.
25. Well, then, if it is true that to give and receive advice--the
former with freedom and yet without bitterness, the latter with patience
and without irritation--is peculiarly appropriate to genuine friendship,
it is no less true that there can be nothing more utterly subversive of
friendship than flattery, adulation, and base compliance. I use as many
terms as possible to brand this vice of light-minded, untrustworthy men,
whose sole object in speaking is to please without any regard to truth.
In everything false pretence is bad, for it suspends and vitiates our
power of discerning the truth. But to nothing it is so hostile as to
friendship; for it destroys that frankness without which friendship is
an empty name. For the essence of friendship being that two minds become
as one, how can that ever take place if the mind of each of the separate
parties to it is not single and uniform, but variable, changeable, and
complex? Can anything be so pliable, so wavering, as the mind of a man
whose attitude depends not only on another's feeling and wish, but on