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 mental trials, but only that he may minister to them. Among
true friends jealousy has no place: they do not complain of one another
for making new friends, or for not revealing some secret of their lives;
(in friendship too there must be reserves;) they do not intrude upon one
another, and they mutually rejoice in any good which happens to either
of them, though it may be to the loss of the other. They may live apart
and have little intercourse, but when they meet, the old tie is as
strong as ever--according to the common saying, they find one
another always the same. The greatest good of friendship is not daily
intercourse, for circumstances rarely admit of this; but on the great
occasions of life, when the advice of a friend is needed, then the word
spoken in season about conduct, about health, about marriage, about
business,--the letter written from a distance by a disinterested person
who sees with clearer eyes may be of inestimable value. When the heart
is failing and despair is setting in, then to hear the voice or grasp
the hand of a friend, in a shipwreck, in a defeat, in some other failure
or misfortune, may restore the necessary courage and composure to the
paralysed and disordered mind, and convert the feeble