Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
H. Rackham, Ed.

as such, but only accidentally, and what they actually desire is the mean between them （since this is the Good）; the dry for instance striving not to become wet, but to reach an intermediate state, and so with the hot, and everything else. Let us however dismiss this question, as being indeed somewhat foreign to our subject. 9.

The objects and the personal relationships with which friendship is concerned appear, as was said at the outset,¹ to be the same as those which are the sphere of justice. For in every partnership we find mutual rights of some sort, and also friendly feeling: one notes that shipmates and fellow-soldiers speak of each other as ‘my friend,’ and so in fact do the partners in any joint undertaking. But their friendship is limited to the extent of their association in their common business, for so also are their mutual rights as associates. Again, the proverb says ‘Friends' goods are common property,’ and this is correct, since community is the essence of friendship. [2] Brothers have all things in common, and so do members of a comradeship²; other friends hold special possessions in common, more or fewer in different cases, inasmuch as friendships vary in degree. The claims of justice also differ in different relationships.