The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [35]
5. ‘What can be more delightful than to have someone you can say anything to, with the same absolute confidence as to yourself?
6. ‘Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy?
7. ‘On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were no one to feel them even more acutely than yourself.
8. ‘In a word, other objects of ambition serve for particular ends:
9. ‘Thus, riches for use, power for securing homage, office for reputation,
10. ‘Pleasure for enjoyment, health for freedom from pain and the full use of the functions of the body.
11. ‘But friendship alone embraces all advantages. Turn which way you please, you will find it at hand;
12. ‘It is everywhere; and yet never out of place, never unwelcome. Fire and water themselves are not of more universal value.
13. ‘I am not now speaking of the common or modified form of friendship, Fannius, though even that is a source of pleasure and profit,
14. ‘But of that true and complete friendship which enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing it.
15. ‘And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes for the future, supports our weakness, and banishes despair.
16. ‘In the face of a true friend we see as it were a second self. So that where a man’s friend is, he is; if his friend be rich, he is not poor;
17. ‘Though he be weak, his friend’s strength is his; and in his friend’s life he enjoys a second life after his own is finished.
18. ‘This last is perhaps the most difficult to understand. But such is the effect of the respect, the loving remembrance, and the regret of friends which follow us to the grave.
19. ‘While they take the sting out of death, they add a glory to the life of the survivors.
20. ‘And indeed: if you eliminate from nature the tie of affection, there will be an end of house and city, nor will so much as the cultivation of the soil be left.’
Chapter 4
1. ‘Anyone who does not see the virtue of friendship for its own sake, Fannius, may learn it by observing the effects of quarrels and feuds.
2. ‘Was any family ever so well established, any state so firmly settled, as to be beyond destruction by animosities and factions?
3. ‘This may teach the immense advantage of friendship; a truth which everybody understands through experience.
4. ‘For if any instance of loyal friendship in confronting or sharing danger becomes apparent, everyone applauds it greatly.
5. ‘One can easily see what a natural feeling it is, when men who would not have the courage to help a friend, themselves show how right they think it when another does so.
6. ‘And it often occurs to me, when thinking about friendship, to ask: is it weakness and want of means that make friendship desired?
7. ‘Is its aim an exchange of services, so that each may give that in which he is strong, and receive that in which he is weak?
8. ‘Or is it not rather true that, although mutual help is an advantage naturally belonging to friendship,
9. ‘Yet its original cause is quite other, prior in time, more noble in character, and springing more directly from human nature itself?
10. ‘The Latin word for friendship, “amicitia”, is derived from the word for love, “amor”, and affection is the prime mover in forming bonds.
11. ‘For as to material advantages, it often happens that they are obtained by people merely pretending friendship, who treat others with respect only from self-interest.
12. ‘But friendship by its nature admits of no feigning, no pretence: it is both genuine and spontaneous.
13. ‘Therefore, Fannius, I say that friendship springs from a natural impulse rather than a wish for help:
14. ‘From an inclination of the heart, combined with a feeling of affection, rather than from calculation of the material advantage.
15. ‘The strength of this feeling you may notice in animals. They show such love to their offspring