The Book of Aristotle 3 · Handed down at the Lyceum, taken from his own writings
He is not a witness. He never saw the Teacher; he was the student of a student. This book does not record his life, only what he wrote in his own books — the Order wants words that can be checked, not a name that can be quoted.
3.1Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had every other good.
3.2Friendship is of three kinds.
3.3One is formed for use, one for pleasure, and one for the goodness of the other person himself.
3.4The first two end when the use ends and the pleasure ends. What was loved was never the person, but what was got from him.
3.5Only the third lasts. What is loved is the person, and a person does not get used up the way a use does.
3.6But the third takes time. Men who have not eaten salt together cannot be said to know one another.
3.7A friend is another self.
3.8So being good to a friend is not a sacrifice. What you do for him and what you do for yourself are two faces of one act.
3.9My teacher’s teacher wrote: whatever once came out of one source is never truly parted. (cf. Gospel of Plato 1.33)
3.10What that means in heaven I do not know. What it means among people I do know — it means this.
3.11Someone asks: if a man is already sufficient to himself, what need has he of friends?
3.12I answer: the sufficient man is precisely the one who most needs them. If there is no one to share them with, what are all those goods sitting there for?
3.13Someone else asks: how many friends should a man have?
3.14I answer: not many. Real friendship takes time and living alongside, and of those two a life does not hold many portions.
3.15You may be good to a great many people. You can become another self with only a few.