is pleasurable, but what is profitable. They that are such have no intimate intercourse, for sometimes they are not even pleasurable to one another. With these friendships is commonly ranked that of hospitality.
But the friendship of the young is thought to be based on the motive of pleasure, because they live at the beck and call of passion, and generally pursue what is pleasurable to themselves, and the object of the present moment. Their age changes, so likewise their pleasures. This the reason why they form and dissolve friendships rapidly, since the friendship changes with the pleasurable object, and such pleasure changes quickly.
Perfect friendship subsists between those who are good, and whose similarity consists in their goodness; for these
Perfect friendship
men wish one another’s good in similar ways, in so far as they are good. And those are specially friends who wish good to their friends for their sakes, because they feel thus towards them on their own account, and not as a mere matter of result. So the friendship between these men continues to subsist so long as they are good, and goodness we know has in it a principle of permanence. Each party is good abstractedly, and also relatively to his friend, for all good men are not only abstractedly good, but also useful to one another. Such friends are also mutually pleasurable, because all good men are so abstractedly, and also relatively to one another, inasmuch as to each individual these actions are pleasurable which correspond to his nature, and all such as are like them.
Friendship is based upon good or pleasure
Friendship under these circumstances is permanent, since it combines in itself all the requisite qualifications of friends. Friendship, of whatever kind, is based upon good or pleasure (either abstractedly or relatively to the person entertaining the sentiment of friendship), and results from a similarity of some sort; and to this kind belong all the aforementioned requisites in the friends themselves, because in this they are similar. In it there is abstractedly good, and the abstractedly pleasant, and as these are specially the object-matter of friendship, so the feeling and state of friendship is found most intense and excellent in men thus qualified.
Rare it is probable friendships will be, because men of this kind are rare. Besides, all requisite qualifications being
The desire for friendship
presupposed, there is farther required time and intimacy. They cannot admit one another to intimacy, much less be friends, till each has appeared to the other and been proved to be a fit object of friendship. They who speedily commence an interchange of friendly actions, may be said to wish to be friends, but they are not so, unless they are also proper objects of friendship and mutually known to be such. A desire for friendship may arise quickly, but not friendship itself.