on their
love; not tho they should swear it, and affirm it was impossible to
live asunder. For the governing faculty of a bad man is faithless,
unsettled, undiscriminating, successively vanquished by different
semblances. But inquire, not as others do, whether they were born of
the same parents, and brought up together, and under the same
preceptor; but this thing only, in what they place their interest--in
externals or in their own wills. If in externals, you can no more
pronounce them friends, than you can call them faithful, or constant,
or brave, or free; nay, nor even truly men, if you are wise. For it is
no principle of humanity that makes them bite and vilify each other,
and take possession of public assemblies, as wild beasts do of
solitudes and mountains; and convert courts of justice into dens of
robbers; that prompts them to be intemperate, adulterers, seducers; or
leads them into other offenses that men commit against each other--all
from that one single error, by which they risk themselves and their
own concerns on things uncontrollable by will.

But if you hear that these men in reality suppose good to be placed
only in the will, and in a right use of things as they appear, no
longer take the trouble of inquiring if they are father and son, or
old companions and acquaintances; but boldly pronounce that they are
friends, and also that they are faithful and just. For where else can
friendship be met, but joined with fidelity and modesty, and the
intercommunication of virtue alone?

"Well; but such a one paid me the utmost regard for so long a time,
and did he not love me?"

How can you tell, foolish man, if that regard be any other than he
pays to his shoes, or his horse, when he cleans them? And how do you
know but that when you cease to be a necessary utensil, he may throw
you away, like a broken stool?

"Well; but it is my wife, and we have lived together many years."

And how many did Eriphyle live with Amphiaraus, and was the mother of
children not a few? But a bauble came between them. What was this
bauble? A false conviction concerning certain things. This turned her
into a savage animal; this cut asunder all love, and suffered neither
the wife nor the mother to continue such.

Whoever, therefore, among you studies either to be or to gain a
friend, let him cut up all false convictions by the root, hate them,
drive them utterly out of his soul. Thus, in the first place, he will
be secure from i