it together and implicating it in various people's fortunes, but we
ought to preserve our friendship for those who are worthy of it, and are
capable of reciprocating it. For this is indeed the greatest argument
against many friends that friendship is originated by similarity. For
seeing that even the brutes can hardly be forced to mix with those that
are unlike themselves, but crouch down, and show their dislike, and run
away, while they mix freely with those that are akin to them and have a
similar nature, and gently and gladly make friends with one another
then, how is it possible that there should be friendship between people
differing in characters and temperaments and ideas of life? For harmony
on the harp or lyre is attained by notes in unison and not in unison,
sharp and flat somehow or other producing concord, but in the harmony of
friendship there must be no unlike, or uneven, or unequal element, but
from all alike must come agreement in opinions and wishes and feeling,
as if one soul were put into several bodies.

Sec. IX. What man then is so industrious, so changeable, and so versatile,
as to be able to make himself like and adapt himself to many different
persons, and not to laugh at the advice of Theognis, "Imitate the
ingenuity of the polypus, that takes the colour of whatever stone it
sticks to."[345] And yet the changes in the polypus do not go deep but
are only on the surface, which, from its thickness or thinness takes the
impression of everything that approaches it, whereas friends endeavour
to be like one another in character, and feeling, and language, and
pursuits, and disposition. It requires a not very fortunate or very good
Proteus,[346] able by jugglery to assume various forms, to be
frequently at the same time a student with the learned, and ready to
try a fall with wrestlers, or to go a hunting with people fond of the
chase, or to get drunk with tipplers, or to go a canvassing with
politicians, having no fixed character of his own.[347] And as the
natural philosophers say of unformed and colourless matter when
subjected to external change, that it is now fire, now water, now air,
now solid earth, so the soul suitable for many friendships must be
impressionable, and versatile, and pliant, and changeable. But
friendship requires a steady constant and unchangeable character, a
person that is uniform in his intimacy. And so a constant friend is a
thing rare and hard to find.

[321] Plato, "