minds. Young people swear 'eternal friendships,' but at these innocent
perjuries their elders laugh. No one forms a friendship with the intention
of renouncing it; yet in the course of a varied life it is practically
certain that many changes will occur of feeling, opinion, locality,
occupation, fortune, which will divide us from some persons and unite us to
others. 6) There is an ancient saying, Qui amicos amicum non habet. But
is not some less exclusive form of friendship better suited to the
condition and nature of man? And in those especially who have no family
ties, may not the feeling pass beyond one or a few, and embrace all with
whom we come into contact, and, perhaps in a few passionate and exalted
natures, all men everywhere? 7) The ancients had their three kinds of
friendship, 'for the sake of the pleasant, the useful, and the good:' is
the last to be resolved into the two first; or are the two first to be
included in the last? The subject was puzzling to them: they could not
say that friendship was only a quality, or a relation, or a virtue, or a
kind of virtue; and they had not in the age of Plato reached the point of
regarding it, like justice, as a form or attribute of virtue. They had
another perplexity: 8) How could one of the noblest feelings of human
nature be so near to one of the most detestable corruptions of it?
(Compare Symposium; Laws).

Leaving the Greek or ancient point of view, we may regard the question in a
more general way. Friendship is the union of two persons in mutual
affection and remembrance of one another. The friend can do for his friend
what he cannot do for himself. He can give him counsel in time of
difficulty; he can teach him 'to see himself as others see him'; he can
stand by him, when all the world are against him; he can gladden and
enlighten him by his presence; he 'can divide his sorrows,' he can 'double
his joys;' he can anticipate his wants. He will discover ways of helping
him without creating a sense of his own superiority; he will find out his