entertain no great feelings of enmity: the latter, owing to his cruelty,
our country has detested and always will detest.

9. Now, if the attraction of probity is so great that we can love it not
only in those whom we have never seen, but, what is more, actually in an
enemy, we need not be surprised if men's affections are roused when they
fancy that they have seen virtue and goodness in those with whom a close
intimacy is possible. I do not deny that affection is strengthened by
the actual receipt of benefits, as well as by the perception of a wish
to render service, combined with a closer intercourse. When these are
added to the original impulse of the heart, to which I have alluded,
a quite surprising warmth of feeling springs up. And if any one thinks
that this comes from a sense of weakness, that each may have some one
to help him to his particular need, all I can say is that, when he
maintains it to be born of want and poverty, he allows to friendship an
origin very base, and a pedigree, if I may be allowed the expression,
far from noble. If this had been the case, a man's inclination to
friendship would be exactly in proportion to his low opinion of his own
resources. Whereas the truth is quite the other way. For when a man's
confidence in himself is greatest, when he is so fortified by virtue and
wisdom as to want nothing and to feel absolutely self-dependent, it
is then that he is most conspicuous for seeking out and keeping up
friendships. Did Africanus, for example, want anything of me? Not
the least in the world! Neither did I of him. In my case it was
an admiration of his virtue, in his an opinion, may be, which he
entertained of my character, that caused our affection. Closer intimacy
added to the warmth of our feelings. But though many great material
advantages did ensue, they were not the source from which our affection
proceeded. For as we are not beneficent and liberal with any view
of extorting gratitude, and do not regard an act of kindness as an
investment, but follow a natural inclination to liberality; so we look
on friendship as worth trying for, not because we are attracted to it by
the expectation of ulterior gain, but in the conviction that what it has
to give us is from first to last included in the feeling itself.

Far different is the view of those who, like brute beasts, refer
everything to sensual pleasure. And no wonder. Men who have degraded
all their powers of thought to an object so