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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: occupation, fortune, which will divide us from some persons and unite us to
others. 6) There is an ancient saying, Qui amicos amicum non habet. But
is not some less exclusive form of friendship better suited to the
condition and nature of man? And in those especially who have no family
ties, may not the feeling pass beyond one or a few, and embrace all with
whom we come into contact, and, perhaps in a few passionate and exalted
natures, all men everywhere? 7) The ancients had their three kinds of
friendship, 'for the sake of the pleasant, the useful, and the good:' is
the last to be resolved into the two first; or are the two first to be
included in the last? The subject was puzzling to them: they could not
say that friendship was only a quality, or a relation, or a virtue, or a
Lysis |
