The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

With these friendships is generally classed the kind of friendship that exists between host and guest.*

The friendship of young men is thought to be s based on pleasure ; for young men live by impulse, and, for the most part, pursue what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately present. But the things in which they take pleasure change as they advance in years. They are quick to make friendships, therefore, and quick to drop them; for3, 3-7.] FRIENDSHIP OR LOVE, 257 their friendship changes as the object which pleases them changes ; and pleasure of this kind is liable to rapid alteration.

* A family of importance in a Greek state was usually connected by ties of hospitality with other families in other states : persons BO connected were not (pi\ot, not strictly friends, since they lived apart ; but leVoj, for which there is no English equivalent.

Moreover, young men are apt to fall in love ; for love is, for the most part, a matter of impulse and based on pleasure: so they fall in love, and again soon cease to love, passing from one state to the other many times in one day.

Friends of this kind wish to spend their time together and to live together; for thus they attain the object of their friendship.

But the perfect kind of friendship is that of good men who resemble one another in virtue. For they both alike wish well to one another as good men, and it is their essential character to be good men. And those who wish well to their friends for the friends' sake are friends in the truest sense ; for they have these sentiments towards each other as being what they are, and not in an accidental way : their friendship, therefore, lasts as long as their virtue, and that is a lasting thing.

Again, each is both good simply and good to his friend ; for it is true of good men that they are both good simply and also useful to one another.

In like manner they are pleasant too ; for good men are both pleasant in themselves and pleasant to one another : for every kind of character takes delight in the acts that are proper to it and those that resemble these ; but the acts of good men are the same or similar.

This kind of friendship, then, is lasting, as we might expect, since it unites in itself all the cons

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ditions of true friendship. For every friendship has for its motive some good or some pleasure (whether %. it be such in itself or relatively to the person who loves), and is founded upon some similarity: but in this case all the requisite characteristics belong to the friends in their own nature ; for here there is similarity and the rest, viz. what is good simply and pleasant simply, and these are the most lovable things : and so it is between persons of this sort that the truest and best love and friendship is found.

It is but natural that such friendships should be uncommon, as such people are rare. Such a friendship, moreover, requires long and familiar intercourse. For, as the proverb says, it is impossible for people to know one another till they have consumed the requisite quantity of salt together. Nor can they accept one another as friends, or be friends, till each show and approve himself to the other as worthy to be loved. Those who quickly come to treat one another like friends may wish to be friends, but are not really friends, unless they not only are lovable, but know each other to be so ; a wish to be friends may be of rapid growth, but not friendship.

This kind of friendship, then, is complete in respect of duration and in all other points, and that which each gets from the other is in all respects identical or similar, as should be the case with friends.

Tke others 4. The friendship of which pleasure is the motive c^ie'^^'^'*'' bears some resemblance to the foregoing; for good