necessity spring. For what is so absurd as to be charmed with many
things that have no substantial worth, as with office, fame,
architecture, dress, and genteel appearance, but not to be in any wise
charmed by a mind endowed with virtue, and capable of either loving or--
if I may use the word--re-loving? [Footnote: Latin, _redamare_, a word
coined by Cicero, and used with the apology, _ut ita dicam_] Nothing
indeed yields a richer revenue than kind affections, nothing gives more
delight than the interchange of friendly cares and offices. Then if we
add, as we rightly may, that there is nothing which so allures and
attracts aught else to itself as the likeness of character does to
friendship it will certainly be admitted that good men love good men and
adopt them into fellowship as if united with them by kindred and by
nature. By nature I say, for nothing is more craving or greedy of its
like than nature. This, then as I think, is evident, Fannius and
Scaevola that among the good toward the good there cannot but be mutual
kind feeling and in this we have a fountain of friendship established by
nature.

But the same kind feeling extends to the community at large. For virtue
is not unsympathetic, nor unserviceable, [Footnote: Latin, _immunis_,
literally--without office.] nor proud. It is wont even to watch over the
well-being of whole nations, and to give them the wisest counsel, which
it would not do if it had no love for the people.

Now those who maintain that friendships are formed from motives of
utility annul, as it seems to me, the most endearing bond of friendship;
for it is not so much benefit obtained through a friend as it is the
very love of the friend that gives delight. What comes from a friend
confers pleasure, only in case it bears tokens of his interest in us,
and so far is it from the truth that friendships are cultivated from a