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You will ask me then, What shall a man do with an untoward brother? I answer, every kind and degree of friendship is subject to abuse from the persons, and in that respect has its taint, according to that of Sophocles: Who into human things makes scrutinies, He may on most his censures exercise.
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For, if you examine the love of relations, the love of associates, or the more sensual passion of fond lovers, you will find none of them all clear, pure, and free from all faults. Wherefore the Spartan, when he married a little wife, said that of evils he had to choose the least. But brothers would do well to bear with one another’s familiar failings, rather than to adventure upon the trial of strangers. For as the former is blameless because it is necessary, so the other is blameworthy because it is voluntary. For it is not to be expected that a sociable guest or a wild crony should be bound by the same Chains of respect, forged by no human hand,
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as one who was nourished from the same breast and carries the same blood in his veins. And therefore it would become a virtuous mind to make a favorable construction of his brother’s miscarriages, and to bespeak him with this candor: I cannot leave you thus under a cloud Of infelicities, Odyss. XIII. 331.
