and greatest boon, if we wish to make it ours, we must devote ourselves to the cultivation of virtue, without which we can attain neither friendship nor anything else desirable. But if virtue be left out of the account, those who think that they have friends perceive that they are mistaken when some important crisis compels them to put their friends to the test. Therefore--for it is worth reiterating--you ought to love after having exercised your judgment on your friends, instead of forming your judgment of them after you have begun to love them. But while in many things we are chargeable with carelessness, we are most so in choosing and keeping our friends. We reverse the old proverb, [Footnote: What this proverb may have been we cannot determine with precision from its opposite; but the caution based upon it might remind one of our proverb about shutting the barn door after the horse is stolen. The words, _acta agimus,_ so terse that they can be translated only by a paraphrase, are probably the converse of the proverb, which may have been something like _non agenda sunt acta_.] take counsel after acting, and attempt to do over again what we have done; for after having become closely connected by long habit and even by mutual services, some occasion of offence springs up, and we suddenly break in sunder a friendship in full career. 23. The more blameworthy are they who are so very careless in a matter of so essential importance. Indeed, among things appertaining to human life, it is friendship alone that has the unanimous voice of all men as to its capacity of service. By many even virtue is scorned, and is said to be a mere matter of display and ostentation. Many despise wealth, and contented with little take pleasure in slender diet and inexpensive living. Though some are inflamed with desire for office, many there are who hold it in so low esteem that they can imagine nothing more inane or worthless. Other things too, which seem to some admirable, very many regard as of no value. But all have the same feeling as to friendship,--alike those who devote themselves to the public service, those who take delight in learning and philosophy, those who manage their own affairs in a quiet way, and, lastly, those who are wholly given up to sensual pleasure. They all agree that without friendship life cannot be, if one only means to live in some form or measure respectably. [Footnote: Latin _liberaliter_ that is, worthily of a free man.] For friendship somehow twines through all lives and leaves no mode of being without its presence. Even if one be of so rude and savage a nature as to shun and hate the society of men, as we have learned was the case with that Timon of Athens, [Footnote: Plutarch says that Timon had an associate, virtually a friend, not unlike himself, Apemantus, on whom he freely vented his spite and scorn for all the world beside and that he also took a special liking to Alcibiades in his youth, perhaps as to one