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We have now said our say about Self-Control and its opposite; and

about Pleasure and Pain. What each is, and how the one set is

good the other bad. We have yet to speak of Friendship.

BOOK VIII

Chapter I.

Next would seem properly to follow a dissertation on Friendship:

because, in the first place, it is either itself a virtue or

connected with virtue; and next it is a thing most necessary for

life, since no one would choose to live without friends though he

should have all the other good things in the world: and, in fact,

men who are rich or possessed of authority and influence are

thought to have special need of friends: for where is the use of

such prosperity if there be taken away the doing of kindnesses of

which friends are the most usual and most commendable objects? Or

how can it be kept or preserved without friends? because the

greater it is so much the more slippery and hazardous: in poverty

moreover and all other adversities men think friends to be their

only refuge.