copy of himself. Thus the absent are present, and the poor are rich, and
the weak are strong, and--what seems stranger still [Footnote:
Literally, _what is harder to say_.]--the dead are alive, such is the
honor, the enduring remembrance, the longing love, with which the dying
are followed by the living; so that the death of the dying seems happy,
the life of the living full of praise. [Footnote: The sense of this
sentence is somewhat overlaid by the rhetoric; yet it undoubtedly means
that an absent friend is esteemed and honored in the person of the
friend who not only loves him, but is regarded as representing him; that
a poor friend enjoys the prosperity of his rich friend as if it were his
own; that a weak friend feels his feebleness energized by the friend who
in need will fight his battles for him; and that no man is suffered to
lapse from the kind and reverent remembrances of those who see his
likeness in the friend who keeps his memory green.] But if from the
condition of human life you were to exclude all kindly union, no house,
no city, could stand, nor, indeed, could the tillage of the field
survive. If it is not perfectly understood what virtue there is in
friendship and concord, it may be learned from dissension and discord.
For what house is so stable, what state so firm, that it cannot be
utterly overturned by hatred and strife? Hence it may be ascertained how
much good there is in friendship. It is said that a certain philosopher
of Agrigentum [Footnote: Empedocles. Only a few fragments of his great
poem are extant. His theory seems like a poetical version of Newton's
law of universal gravitation. The analogy between physical attraction
and the mutual attraction of congenial minds and souls has its record in
the French word _aimant_, denoting _loadstone_ or _magnet_.] sang in
Greek verse that it is friendship that draws together and discord that
parts all things which subsist in harmony, and which have their various
movements in nature and in the whole universe. The worth and power of
friendship, too, all mortals understand, and attest by their approval in