Where people do not interchange pleasure but profit in matters of Love,
the Friendship is both less intense in degree and also less permanent:
in fact, they who are friends because of advantage commonly part when
the advantage ceases; for, in reality, they never were friends of one
another but of the advantage.
So then it appears that from motives of pleasure or profit bad men may
be friends to one another, or good men to bad men or men of neutral
character to one of any character whatever: but disinterestedly, for
the sake of one another, plainly the good alone can be friends; because
bad men have no pleasure even in themselves unless in so far as some
advantage arises.
And further, the Friendship of the good is alone superior to calumny;
it not being easy for men to believe a third person respecting one whom
they have long tried and proved: there is between good men mutual
confidence, and the feeling that one’s friend would never have done one
wrong, and all other such things as are expected in Friendship really
worthy the name; but in the other kinds there is nothing to prevent all
such suspicions.
I call them Friendships, because since men commonly give the name of
friends to those who are connected from motives of profit (which is
justified by political language, for alliances between states are
thought to be contracted with a view to advantage), and to those who
are attached to one another by the motive of pleasure (as children
are), we may perhaps also be allowed to call such persons friends, and
say there are several species of Friendship; primarily and specially
that of the good, in that they are good, and the rest only in the way
of resemblance: I mean, people connected otherwise are friends in that
way in which there arises to them somewhat good and some mutual
resemblance (because, we must remember the pleasurable is good to those
who are fond of it).
These secondary Friendships, however, do not combine very well; that is
to say, the same persons do not become friends by reason of advantage
and by reason of the pleasurable, for these matters of result are not
often combined. And Friendship having been divided into these kinds,
bad men will be friends by reason of pleasure or profit, this being
their point of resemblance; while the good are friends for one
another’s sake, that is, in so far as they are good.
These last may be termed abstractedly and simply friends, the former as
a matter of result and termed friends from their resemblance to these
last.
Chapter VI.