with
hostility and hatred, and like the voiding of bile.

Sec. IV. We ought not, therefore, lightly to welcome or strike up an
intimate friendship with any chance comers, or love those who attach
themselves to us, but attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our
friendship. For what is easily got is not always desirable: and we pass
over and trample upon heather and brambles that stick to us[331] on our
road to the olive and vine: so also is it good not always to make a
friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us, but
after testing them to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our
affection and likely to be serviceable to us.

Sec. V. As therefore Zeuxis, when some people accused him of painting
slowly, replied, "I admit that I do, but then I paint to last," so ought
we to test for a long time the friendship and intimacy that we take up
and mean to keep. Is it not easy then to put to the test many friends,
and to associate with many friends at the same time, or is this
impossible? For intimacy is the full enjoyment of friendship, and most
pleasant is companying with and spending the day with a friend. "Never
again shall we alive, apart from dear friends, sit and take counsel
alone together."[332] And Menelaus said about Odysseus, "Nor did
anything ever divide or separate us, who loved and delighted in one
another, till death's black cloud overshadowed us."[333] The contrary
effect seems to be produced by abundance of friends. For the friendship
of a pair of friends draws them together and puts them together and
holds them together, and is heightened by intercourse and kindliness,
"as when the juice of the fig curdles and binds the white milk,"[334] as
Empedocles says, such unity and complete union will such a friendship
produce. Whereas having many friends puts people apart and severs and
disunites them, by transferring and shifting the tie of friendship too
frequently, and does not admit of a mixture and welding of goodwill by
the diffusing and compacting of intimacy. And this causes at once an
inequality and difficulty in respect of acts of kindness, for the uses
of friendship become inoperative by being dispersed over too wide an
area. "One man is acted upon by his character, another by his
reflection."[335] For neither do our natures and impulses always incline
in the same directions, nor are our fortunes in life identical, for
opportunities of action are, like the winds, favourable to