"Here arises the question to know whether one can keep up friendly relations with the vicious.[49] One cannot avoid meeting them; for one would have to quit the world, and we are not ourselves competent judges in respect to them. But when vice becomes a scandal--that is to say, a public example of contempt of the strict laws of duty, thus carrying with it opprobrium--then one should stop all relations one may have had heretofore with the guilty person; for the continuation of this relation would deprive virtue of honor, and make of it a merchandise for the use of whoever were rich enough to corrupt parasites through the pleasures of good living." =64. Duties of friendship.=--Besides the general duties of every kind which link us with all men, for the only reason that they are men, there are particular duties imposed on us toward those of our fellow-beings, to whom we are united by the bonds of friendship. The duties of friendship have been admirably known and described by the ancients. We could not, therefore, treat this subject better here than by briefly recalling some few passages from Aristotle or Cicero. According to Aristotle, there are three kinds of friendship: the friendship of _pleasure_, the friendship of _interest_, and the friendship of _virtue_. The latter is the only true one. "There are three kinds of friendship.... The people who love each other from interested motives, for the use they are to each other, love each other, not for their own sakes, but only inasmuch as they get any good or profit from their mutual relations. It is the same with those who only love each other for pleasure's sake. When one loves from motives of pleasure only, one really seeks nothing else but this same pleasure. Such friendships are only indirect and accidental. They are very easily broken, because these pretended friends do not long remain the same. "Utility, interest, have nothing fixed; they vary from one moment to another. The motive which originated the friendship disappearing, the friendship disappears as rapidly with it.