For
these do not take pleasure in the same things, but the one in seeing
the beloved and the other in receiving attentions from his lover;
and when the bloom of youth is passing the friendship sometimes passes
too (for the one finds no pleasure in the sight of the other, and
the other gets no attentions from the first); but many lovers on the
other hand are constant, if familiarity has led them to love each
other's characters, these being alike. But those who exchange not
pleasure but utility in their amour are both less truly friends and
less constant. Those who are friends for the sake of utility part when
the advantage is at an end; for they were lovers not of each other but
of profit.
For the sake of pleasure or utility, then, even bad men may be
friends of each other, or good men of bad, or one who is neither
good nor bad may be a friend to any sort of person, but for their
own sake clearly only good men can be friends; for bad men do not
delight in each other unless some advantage come of the relation.
The friendship of the good too and this alone is proof against
slander; for it is not easy to trust any one talk about a man who
has long been tested by oneself; and it is among good men that trust
and the feeling that 'he would never wrong me' and all the other
things that are demanded in true friendship are found.
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