"How much in adversity do we not wish for a friend, especially an effective friend, one finding in his own resources abundant means for helping us? Yet is it a very heavy burden to feel one's self responsible for the fortunes of another, and called to provide for his necessities.... Then if the one receives a kindness from the other, perhaps there may be yet reason to hope for perfect equality in love; but he could no longer expect perfect equality in respect; for being under obligation to one he cannot oblige in his turn, he feels himself manifestly one degree his inferior.... Friendship is something so tender that if one does not subject this reciprocal abandonment and interchange of thoughts to principles, to fixed rules, which prevent too great a familiarity and limit reciprocal love by the requirements of respect, it will see itself every instant threatened by some interruption.... In any case affection in friendship should not be a passion; for passion is blind in its choice, and evaporates with time.[50] =66. Duties of benevolence.--Duties minima.=--From _kindness_ we pass to _benevolence_. The one resides in sentiment, the other in acts: the first consists in _wishing_ well, the second in _doing_ good. The least degree of _benevolence_ consists in rendering to others those smaller services which cost us nothing, and which are helpful to them. It is what Puffendorf calls the _duties minima_ of benevolence.[51] Cicero, in his _Treatise on duties_ (I., xvi.), gives several examples of this kind: "To show the way to him who asks for it; to forbid no one the use of running water; to give fire to him who has need of it; to give advice in good faith to him who is in doubt." Plutarch, in the same sense, says that the Romans never extinguished their lamps after their meals, and always left something on the table to accustom the servants of the house to the duties of humanity. By the law of Moses, the owner of a field was obliged always to leave some corner uncut and not glean the ears that had escaped the reapers. Finally, a Greek poet, Phocylides, expressed in the following lines this minimum of benevolence which every one can exercise: "Give shelter to those who have none; lead the blind; be merciful to those who have suffered shipwreck; extend a helping hand to the fallen; assist those that have no one to help them out of danger."