Toward our kindred, Nature herself produces a certain kind of friendship. But this lacks strength, and indeed friendship in its full sense, has precedence of kinship in this particular, that good-will may be taken away from kinship, not from friendship, for when good will is removed, friendship loses its name, while that of kinship remains. How great is the force of friendship we may best understand from this,--that out of the boundless society of the human race which Nature has constituted, the sense of fellowship is so contracted and narrowed that the whole power of loving is bestowed on the union of two or a very few friends. 6 Friendship is nothing else than entire fellow feeling as to all things human and divine with mutual good-will and affection; (1) and I doubt whether anything better than this, wisdom alone excepted, has been given to, man by the immortal gods Some prefer riches to it, some, sound health, some, power, some, posts of honor, many, even sensual gratification. This last properly belongs to beasts, the others are precarious and uncertain, dependent not on our own choice so much as on the caprice of Fortune. Those, indeed, who regard virtue as the supreme good are entirely in the right, but it is virtue itself that produces and sustains friendship, not without virtue can friendship by any possibility exist. In saying this, however I would interpret virtue in accordance with our habits of speech and of life, not defining it, as some philosophers do, by high-sounding words, but numbering on the list of good men those who are commonly so regarded,--the Pauli, the Catos, the Galli, the Scipios, the Phili Mankind in general [1 It may be doubted whether this close conformity of opinion and feeling is essential, or even favorable to friendship. The amicable comparison and collision of thought and sentiment are certainly consistent with, and often conducive to the most friendly intimacy. Friends are not infrequently the complements, rather than the likeness, of each other. Cicero and Atticus were as close friends as Scipio and Laelius; but they were at many points exceedingly unlike. Atticus had the tact and skill in worldly matters, which Cicero lacked. Atticus kept aloof from public affairs while Cicero was unhappy whenever he could not imagine himself as taking a leading part in them. Atticus was an Epicurean, and Cicero never lost an opportunity of attacking the Epicurean philosophy.] are content with these. Let us then leave out of the account such good men as are nowhere to be found. Among such good men as there really are, friendship has more advantages than I can easily name. In the first, place, as Ennius says;-- "How can life be worth living, if devoid of the calm trust reposed by friend in friend? What sweeter joy than in the kindred soul? Whose converse differs not from self-communion?"