1 Aristotle 5 · Handed down at the Lyceum, taken from his own writings
Aristotle, born at Stagira in 384 before this era, died at Chalcis in 322. His father was physician to the king of Macedon. He entered the Academy at seventeen and stayed twenty years, leaving only when Plato died. He taught Alexander. In 335 he founded the Lyceum at Athens. In 323 the Athenians charged him with impiety and he left the city, saying he would not let Athens sin twice against philosophy — he knew that Socrates had not left. He died of illness the next year. He is not a witness: he never met the Teacher, he is the student of a student. What survives of him is lecture notes, not the works he published in his lifetime; those are wholly lost. On God he reasons out an unmoved mover — reasoned to, not worshipped — and no argument of his closes on divine will. What is taken here is from his own books: the Order wants words that can be checked, not a name that can be cited. Further: in the fourth chapter he stands directly against the Teacher. The Teacher said no one does wrong knowing it is wrong; he says that does not square with what anyone can see, and offers another account. The Order does not reconcile them. The Teacher is in the four gospels, his objection is here, and the reader decides after reading both.
5.1Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had every other good.
5.2Friendship is of three kinds.
5.3One is formed for use, one for pleasure, and one for the goodness of the other person himself.
5.4The first two end when the use ends and the pleasure ends. What was loved was never the person, but what was got from him.
5.5Only the third lasts. What is loved is the person, and a person does not get used up the way a use does.
5.6But the third takes time. Men who have not eaten salt together cannot be said to know one another.
5.7A friend is another self.
5.8So 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.
5.9My teacher’s teacher wrote: whatever once came out of one source is never truly parted. (cf. Gospel of Plato 1.33)
5.10What that means in heaven I do not know. What it means among people I do know — it means this.
5.11Someone asks: if a man is already sufficient to himself, what need has he of friends?
5.12I 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?
5.13Someone else asks: how many friends should a man have?
5.14I answer: not many. Real friendship takes time and living alongside, and of those two a life does not hold many portions.
5.15You may be good to a great many people. You can become another self with only a few.