ON FRIENDSHIP
friendships, do not merit even to be noticed; the entire confusion of our wills is the cause: for just as the friendship I have for myself is not aggravated by the assistance I give myself when in need, whatsoever the Stoics may say, and as I feel no gratitude for the service I do myself, so the union of such friends, being veritably perfect, makes them lose the sentiment of such duties, and hate and drive away those words of separation and difference, benefit, obligation, gratitude, entreaty, thankfulness, and the like. As everything is really common between them, desires, thoughts, opinions, property, wives, children, honour, and life, and their agreement gives them but one soul in two bodies, according to the very apt definition of Aristotle, they are not able to lend or give each other anything. That is why the lawmakers, to honour marriage with some likeness to this divine union, forbid donations between husband and wife ; inferring by this that everything should belong to them both and that they have nothing to divide and separate.
If, in the friendship whereof I speak, one could give to the other, it would be he who received the
favour that would oblige his fellow: because, since
19
