based on goodness; what rests on pleasantness
(as with the young), or on utility (as with the old), is only to be
recognised conventionally as friendship. In perfection it cannot subsist
without perfect mutual knowledge, and only between the good; hence it is
not possible for anyone to have many real friends. Of the conventional
forms, that which is born of intellectual sympathy is more enduring than
what springs from sexual attraction; while what comes of utility is
quite accidental. The former may develop into genuine friendship if
there be virtue in both parties. Companionship is a necessary condition,
in any case.

Variants of friendship, however, may subsist between unequals, as
between parents and children, princes and subjects, men and women, where
there is a difference in the character of the affection of the two
parties. A certain degree of inequality--though we cannot lay down the
limitation--makes "friendship" a misnomer. One would not desire the
actual apotheosis of a friend, because that would take him out of reach;
it would end friendship. Friendship lies rather in the active loving
than in being loved, though most people are more anxious to be loved
than to love.

Every form of social community--typified in the State--involves
relationships into which friendship enters. The relationships in the
family correspond to those in states; monarch to subjects as father to
children, tyrant to subjects as master to slaves; autocratic rule to
that of the husband, oligarchic rule to that of the wife; what we call
Timocracy to the fraternal relation, and Democracy to the entirely
unregulated household. In some kinds of association, friendship takes
the form of _esprit de corps_. It may be seen that quarrels arise most
readily in those friendships between equals which are based upon
interest, and in friendships between unequals.

Friendship is a kind of exchange--equal between equals, and proportional
between unequals; a repayment. This suggests various questions as to
priority of claim--_e.g.,_ between paying your father's ransom and
repaying a loan, both being in a sort the repayment of a debt. No fixed
law can be laid down--_i.e.,_ it cannot be said that one obligation at
all times and in all circumstances overrides all others.

The dissolution of friendship is warranted when one party has become
depraved, since he has changed from being the person who was the object
of friendship. But he should not be given up