rom a mere wish to
escape from anxiety. Nay, if we wish to avoid anxiety we must avoid
virtue itself, which necessarily involves some anxious thoughts in
showing its loathing and abhorrence for the qualities which are opposite
to itself--as kindness for ill-nature, self-control for licentiousness,
courage for cowardice. Thus you may notice that it is the just who are
most pained at injustice, the brave at cowardly actions, the temperate
at depravity. It is then characteristic of a rightly ordered mind to be
pleased at what is good and grieved at the reverse. Seeing then that the
wise are not exempt from the heart-ache (which must be the case unless
we suppose all human nature rooted out of their hearts), why should we
banish friendship from our lives, for fear of being involved by it
in some amount of distress? If you take away emotion, what difference
remains I don't say between a man and a beast, but between a man and a
stone or a log of wood, or anything else of that kind?

Neither should we give any weight to the doctrine that virtue is
something rigid and unyielding as iron. In point of fact it is in regard
to friendship, as in so many other things, so supple and sensitive that
it expands, so to speak, at a friend's good fortune, contracts at his
misfortunes. We conclude then that mental pain which we must often
encounter on a friend's account is not of sufficient consequence to
banish friendship from our life, any more than it is true that the
cardinal virtues are to be dispensed with because they involve certain
anxieties and distresses.

14. Let me repeat then, "the clear indication of virtue, to which a
mind of like character is naturally attracted, is the beginning of
friendship." When that is the case the rise of affection is a necessity.
For what can be more irrational than to take delight in many objects
incapable of response, such as office, fame, splendid buildings, and
personal decoration, and yet to take little or none in a sentient being
endowed with virtue, which has the faculty of loving or, if I may use
the expression, loving back? For nothing is really more delightful than
a return of affection, and the mutual interchange of kind feeling
and good offices. And if we add, as we may fairly do, that nothing so
powerfully attracts and draws one thing to itself as likeness does to
friendship, it wilt at once be admitted to be true that the good love
the good and attach them to themselves as though they