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

4. Friendly relations to others, and all the charac teristics by which friendship is defined, seem to b derived from our relations towards ourselves. j friend is sometimes described as one who wishes am does to another what is good or seems good for tha other's sake, or as one who wishes his friend exist and to live for his (the friend's) sake. (Thi is what mothers feel towards their children, am what friends who have had a difference feel for on another.) Others describe a friend as one who live with another and chooses what he chooses, or as on who sympathizes with the griefs and joys of hi friend. (This, also, is especially the case wit mothers.) And, similarly, friendship is usually d( fined by some one or other of these characteristics.

Now, every one of these characteristics we fim in the good man's relations to himself, and in othe men so far as they suppose themselves to be gooc (For it seems, as we have said, that virtue and th good man are in everything the standard.)

The good man is of one mind with himself, an<

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desires the same things with all his soul, and wishes for himself what both is and seems good, and does that (for it is characteristic of him to work out that which is good) for his own sake — for the sake, that is to say, of the rational part of him, which seems to be a man's self And he wishes his self to live and be preserved, and especially that part of his self by which he thinks : for existence is good to the good man ; and every man wishes for himself that which is good. But no one desires that, as he becomes another man [i.e. as he grows older], that other self should be in all respects the same as his present self. (With God, indeed, this may be, for God already is in complete possession of the good; but that is only as being what he is [not man, but God].) But his reason would seem to be a man's self, or, at least, to be so in a truer sense than any other of his faculties.

Such a man also wishes to live with himself; for his own company is pleasant to him. The memory of his past life is sweet, and for the future he has good hopes ; and such hopes are pleasant. His mind, moreover, is well stored with matter for contemplation : and he sympathizes with himself in sorrow and in joy; for at all seasons the same things give him pain and pleasure, not this thing now, and then another thing, — for he is, so to speak, not apt to change his mind.

Since, then, all these characteristics are found in the good man's relations to himself, and since his relations to his friend are the same as his relations to himself (for his friend is his second self), friendship is described by one or other of these characteristics.

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and those are called friends in whom these character. istics are found.

The question whether friendship towards one's self is or is not possible may be dismissed at present ; but that it is possible so far as one has two or more selves would seem to follow from what has been already said, and also from the fact that the extreme of friendship for another is likened to friendship for one's self