Kitap 7
41
because when eager to be friends they think that by rendering each other all friendly services they do not merely wish to be friends but actually are friends. But as a matter of fact it happens in friendship as in everything else; people are not healthy merely if they wish to be healthy, so that even if people wish to be friends they are not actually friends already.
42
A proof of this is that people who have come into this position without first testing one another are easily set at variance; for though men are not set at variance easily about things in which they have allowed each other to test them, in cases where they have not, whenever those who are attempting to set then, at variance produce evidence they may be convinced.
43
At the same time it is manifest that this friendship does not occur between base people either; for the base and evil-natured man is distrustful towards everybody, because he measures other people by himself. Hence good men are more easily cheated, unless as a result of trial they are distrustful.
44
But the base prefer the goods of nature to a friend, and none of them love people more than things; and so they are not friends, for the proverbial common property as between friends is not realized in this way—the friend is made an appendage of the things, not the things of the friends.
45
Therefore the first kind of friendship does not occur between many men, because it is difficult to test many—one would have to go and live with each of them. Nor indeed should one exercise choice in the case of a friend in the same way as about a coat;
