The society for which all rational beings are intended will naturally be found to exist principally among those who have become alive to their rational nature and destiny—in other words, among the wise. All who are wise and virtuous are friends, because they agree in their views of life, and because they all love one another’s virtue. [808] Thus every action of a wise man contributes to the well-being of every other wise man—or, as the Stoics pointedly express it, if a wise man only makes a rational movement with his finger, he does a service to all wise men throughout the world. [809] On the other hand, only a wise man knows how to love properly; true friendship only exists between wise men. [810] Only the wise man possesses the art of making friends, [811] since love is only won by love. [812] If, however, true friendship is a union between the good and the wise, its value is thereby at once established; and hence it is distinctly enumerated among goods by the Stoics. [813] On this point, difficulties reappear. How can this need of society be reconciled with the wise man’s freedom from wants? If the wise man is self-sufficient, how can another help him? How can he stand in need of such help? The answers given by Seneca are not satisfactory. To the first question, he replies, that none but a wise man can give the right inducement to a wise man to call his powers into exercise. [814] He meets the second by saying, that a wise man suffices himself for happiness, but not for life. [815] Everywhere the wise man finds inducements to virtuous action; if friendship is not a condition of happiness, it is not a good at all. Nor are his further observations more satisfactory. The wise man, he says, [816] does not wish to be without friends, but still he can be without friends. But the question is not whether he can be, but whether he can be without loss of happiness. If the question so put is answered in the negative, it follows that the wise man is not altogether self-sufficing; if in the affirmative—and a wise man, as Seneca affirms, will bear the loss of a friend with calmness, because he comforts himself with the thought that he can have another at any moment—then friendship is not worth much. Moreover, if a wise man can help another by communicating to him information and method, since no wise man is omniscient, [817] is not a wise man, if not in possession of all knowledge, at least in possession of all knowledge contributing to virtue and happiness? If it be added, that what one learns from another he learns by his own powers, and in consequence of himself helping himself, does not this addition still overlook the fact that the teacher’s activity is the condition of the learner’s? True and beautiful as is the language of Seneca: Friendship has its value in itself alone; every wise man must wish to find those like himself; the good have a natural love for the good; the wise man needs a friend, not to have a nurse in sickness and an assistant in