reatment".

Cicero's own character displays itself in this short treatise. Here, as
everywhere, he is the politician. He shows a true appreciation of the
duties and the qualifications of a true friend; but his own thoughts are
running upon political friendships. Just as when, in many of his letters,
he talks about "all honest men", he means "our party"; so here, when he
talks of friends, he cannot help showing that it was of the essence of
friendship, in his view, to hold the same political opinions, and that
one great use of friends was that a man should not be isolated, as he had
sometimes feared he was, in his political course. When he puts forward
the old instances of Coriolanus and Gracchus, and discusses the question
whether their "friends" were or were not bound to aid them in their
treasonable designs against the state, he was surely thinking of the
factions of his own times, and the troublesome brotherhoods which had
gathered round Catiline and Clodius. Be this as it may, the advice which
he makes Laelius give to his younger relatives is good for all ages,
modern or ancient: "There is nothing in this world more valuable than
friendship". "Next to the immediate blessing and providence of Almighty
God", Lord Clarendon was often heard to say, "I owe all the little I know,
and the little good that is in me, to the friendships and conversation I
have still been used to, of the most excellent men in their several kinds
that lived in that age".

CHAPTER XI.

CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY.

'THE TRUE ENDS OF LIFE'.[1]

Philosophy was to the Roman what religion is to me. It professed to
answer, so far as it might be answered Pilate's question, "What is truth?"
or to teach men, as Cicero described it, "the knowledge of things human
and divine". Hence the philosopher invests his subject with all attributes
of dignity. To him Philosophy brings all blessings in her train. She is
the guide of life, the medicine for his sorrows, "the fountain-head of
all perfect eloquence--the mother of all good deeds and good words". He
invokes with affectionate reverence the great name of Socrates--the sage
who had "first drawn wisdom down from heaven".

[Footnote 1: 'De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum'.]

No man ever approached his subject more richly laden with philosophic lore
than Cicero. Snatching every leisure moment that he could from a busy
life, he devotes it to the study of the great minds of former ages.
Indeed, he held this s