question as to their honour, purity, equity, and liberality; who are
free from greed, lust, and violence; and who have the courage of their
convictions_. The men I have just named may serve as examples. Such men
as these being generally accounted "good," let us agree to call them so,
on the ground that to the best of human ability they follow nature as
the most perfect guide to a good life.

Now this truth seems clear to me, that nature has so formed us that
a certain tie unites us all, but that this tie becomes stronger from
proximity. So it is that fellow-citizens are preferred in our affections
to foreigners, relations to strangers; for in their case Nature herself
has caused a kind of friendship to exist, though it is one which lacks
some of the elements of permanence. Friendship excels relationship in
this, that whereas you may eliminate affection from relationship, you
cannot do so from friendship. Without it relationship still exists in
name, friendship does not. You may best understand this friendship by
considering that, whereas the merely natural ties uniting the human race
are indefinite, this one is so concentrated, and confined to so narrow a
sphere, that affection is ever shared by two persons only or at most by
a few.

6. Now friendship may be thus defined: a complete accord on all subjects
human and divine, joined with mutual goodwill and affection. And with
the exception of wisdom, I am inclined to think nothing better than this
has been given to man by the immortal gods. There are people who give
the palm to riches or to good health, or to power and office, many even
to sensual pleasures. This last is the ideal of brute beasts; and of the
others we may say that they are frail and uncertain, and depend less on
our own prudence than on the caprice of fortune. Then there are those
who find the "chief good" in virtue. Well, that is a noble doctrine. But
the very virtue they talk of is the parent and preserver of friendship,
and without it friendship cannot possibly exist.

Let us, I repeat, use the word virtue in the ordinary acceptation and
meaning of the term, and do not let us define it in high-flown language.
Let us account as good the persons usually considered so, such as
Paulus, Cato, Gallus, Scipio, and Philus. Such men as these are good
enough for everyday life; and we need not trouble ourselves about those
ideal characters which are nowhere to be met with.

Well, between men like these the adv