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On Abundance Of Friends
by
“Those who shall lose such friends may well be glad,
And those who have such pray that they may lose them.”[330]
Yet is it difficult and by no means easy to avoid and bring to a close an unpleasant friendship: as in the case of food which is injurious and harmful, we cannot retain it on the stomach without damage and hurt, nor can we expel it as it was taken into the mouth, but only in a putrid mixed up and changed form, so a bad friend is troublesome both to others and himself if retained, and if he be got rid of forcibly it is with hostility and hatred, and like the voiding of bile.
Sec. IV. We ought not, therefore, lightly to welcome or strike up an intimate friendship with any chance comers, or love those who attach themselves to us, but attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our friendship. For what is easily got is not always desirable: and we pass over and trample upon heather and brambles that stick to us[331] on our road to the olive and vine: so also is it good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us, but after testing them to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us.
Sec. V. As therefore Zeuxis, when some people accused him of painting slowly, replied, “I admit that I do, but then I paint to last,” so ought we to test for a long time the friendship and intimacy that we take up and mean to keep. Is it not easy then to put to the test many friends, and to associate with many friends at the same time, or is this impossible? For intimacy is the full enjoyment of friendship, and most pleasant is companying with and spending the day with a friend. “Never again shall we alive, apart from dear friends, sit and take counsel alone together.”[332] And Menelaus said about Odysseus, “Nor did anything ever divide or separate us, who loved and delighted in one another, till death’s black cloud overshadowed us.”[333] The contrary effect seems to be produced by abundance of friends. For the friendship of a pair of friends draws them together and puts them together and holds them together, and is heightened by intercourse and kindliness, “as when the juice of the fig curdles and binds the white milk,”[334] as Empedocles says, such unity and complete union will such a friendship produce. Whereas having many friends puts people apart and severs and disunites them, by transferring and shifting the tie of friendship too frequently, and does not admit of a mixture and welding of goodwill by the diffusing and compacting of intimacy. And this causes at once an inequality and difficulty in respect of acts of kindness, for the uses of friendship become inoperative by being dispersed over too wide an area. “One man is acted upon by his character, another by his reflection.”[335] For neither do our natures and impulses always incline in the same directions, nor are our fortunes in life identical, for opportunities of action are, like the winds, favourable to some, unfavourable to others.
Sec. VI. Moreover, if all our friends want to do the same things at the same time, it will be difficult to satisfy them all, whether they desire to deliberate, or to act in state affairs, or wish for office, or are going to entertain guests. If again at the same time they chance to be engaged in different occupations and interests and ask you all together, one who is going on a voyage that you will sail with him, another who is going to law that you will be his advocate, another who is going to try a case that you will try it with him, another who is selling or buying that you will go into partnership with him, another who is going to marry that you will join him in the sacrifice, another who is going to bury a relation that you will be one of the mourners,