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especially in time of misfortune, and is a
considerable help in assuaging sorrow; for a friend, if tactful, can comfort us with look
and word, as he knows our characters and what things give us pleasure and pain.
[4]
But on the other hand to see another pained by our own misfortunes
is painful, as everyone is reluctant to be a cause of pain to his friends. Hence manly
natures shrink from making their friends share their pain, and unless a man is excessively
insensitive, he cannot bear the pain that his pain gives to them; and he will not suffer
others to lament with him, because he is not given to lamentation himself. But weak women
and womanish men like those who mourn with them, and love them as true friends and
sympathizers. However, it is clear that in everything we ought to copy the example of the
man of nobler nature.
[5]
In prosperity again the company of friends sweetens our hours of leisure, and also
affords the pleasure of being conscious of their pleasure in our welfare.
Hence it may be thought that we ought to be eager to invite our friends to share our good
fortune (since it is noble to wish to bestow benefits), but reluctant to
ask them to come to us in misfortune (since we should impart to others as little
as possible of what is evil: whence the proverb ‘My own misfortune is
enough’). We should summon our friends to our aid chiefly when they
will be of great service to us at the cost of little trouble to themselves.
[6]
So, conversely, it is perhaps fitting that we should go uninvited and readily to those in
misfortune (for it is the part of a friend to render service, and especially to
those in need, and without being asked, since assistance so rendered is more noble and
more pleasant for both parties); but to the prosperous, though we should go
readily to help them (for even prosperity needs the cooperation of
friends),1 we
should be slow in going when it is a question of enjoying their good things (for
it is not noble to be eager to receive benefits). But doubtless we should be
careful to avoid seeming churlish in repulsing their advances, a thing that does sometimes
occur.
It appears therefore that the company of friends is desirable in all circumstances.
12.
As then lovers find their greatest delight in seeing those they love, and prefer the
gratification of the sense of sight to that of all the other senses, that sense being the
chief seat and source of love, so likewise for friends (may we not say?)
the society of each other is the most desirable thing there is. For (i)
friendship is essentially a partnership. And (ii) a man stands in the
same relation to a friend as to himself2; but the consciousness of his own existence is a good; so also therefore is
the consciousness of his friend's existence; but this3 consciousness is actualized
in intercourse;