will show your goodness, and that you love him, and make him appear to be
ill-natured, and not deserving to be obliged by any man. But I am of
opinion this will not happen, and when he sees that you attack him with
civilities and good offices, I am certain he will endeavour to get the
better of you in so kind and generous a contention. You are now in the
most wretched condition imaginable. It is as if the hands which God has
given us reciprocally to aid each other were employed only to hinder one
another, or as if the feet, which by the divine providence were made to
assist each other to walk, were busied only in preventing one another
from going forward. Would it not, then, be a great ignorance, and at the
same time a great misfortune, to turn to our disadvantage what was made
only for our utility? Now, it is certain that God has given us brothers
only for our good; and that two brothers are a greater advantage to one
another than it can be to either of them to have two hands, two feet, two
eyes, and other the like members, which are double in our body, and which
Nature has designed as brothers. For the hands cannot at the same time
reach two things several fathoms distant from one another; the feet
cannot stretch themselves from the end of one fathom to another; the
eyes, which seem to discover from so far, cannot, at the same time, see
the fore and hind-part of one and the same object; but when two brothers
are good friends, no distance of place can hinder them from serving each
other."



CHAPTER IV. A DISCOURSE OF SOCRATES CONCERNING FRIENDSHIP.


I remember likewise a discourse which I have heard him make concerning
friendship, and that may be of great use to instruct us by what means we