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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.