For he is at unity in himself, and with every part of his soul he desires the same objects; and he wishes for himself both what is, and what he believes to be, good; and he does it (it being characteristic of the good man to work at what is good), and for the sake of himself, inasmuch as he does it for the sake of his Intellectual Principle which is generally thought to be a man’s Self. Again, he wishes himself And specially this Principle whereby he is an intelligent being, to live and be preserved in life, because existence is a good to him that is a good man. But it is to himself that each individual wishes what is good, and no man, conceiving the possibility of his becoming other than he now is, chooses that that New Self should have all things indiscriminately: a god, for instance, has at the present moment the Chief Good, but he has it in right of being whatever he actually now is: and the Intelligent Principle must be judged to be each man’s Self, or at least eminently so [though other Principles help, of course, to constitute him the man he is]. Furthermore, the good man wishes to continue to live with himself; for he can do it with pleasure, in that his memories of past actions are full of delight and his anticipations of the future are good and such are pleasurable. Then, again, he has good store of matter for his Intellect to contemplate, and he most especially sympathises with his Self in its griefs and joys, because the objects which give him pain and pleasure are at all times the same, not one thing to-day and a different one to-morrow: because he is not given to repentance,[1] if one may so speak. It is then because each of these feelings are entertained by the good man towards his own Self and a friend feels towards a friend as towards himself (a friend being in fact another Self), that Friendship is thought to be some one of these things and they are accounted friends in whom they are found. Whether or no there can really be Friendship between a man and his Self is a question we will not at present entertain: there may be thought to be Friendship, in so far as there are two or more of the aforesaid requisites, and because the highest degree of Friendship, in the usual acceptation of that term, resembles the feeling entertained by a man towards himself. But it may be urged that the aforesaid requisites are to all appearance found in the common run of men, though they are men of a low stamp.