Kitap 8
2
Friendships therefore based on pleasure and on and utility can exist between two bad men, between one bad man and one good, and between a man neither good nor bad and another either good, bad, or neither. But clearly only good men can be friends for what they are in themselves; since bad men do not take pleasure in each other, save as they get some advantage from each other.
3
Also friendship between good men alone is proof against calumny; for a man is slow to believe anybody’s word about a friend whom he has himself tried and tested for many years, and with them there is the mutual confidence, the incapacity ever to do each other wrong, and all the other characteristics that are required in true friendship. Whereas the other forms of friendship are liable to be dissolved by calumny and suspicion.
4
But since people do apply the term friends to persons whose regard for each other is based on utility, just as states can be friends (since expediency is generally recognized as the motive of international alliances), or on pleasure, as children make friends, perhaps we too must call such relationships friendships; but then we must say that there are several sorts of friendship, that between good men, as good, being friendship in the primary and proper meaning of the term, while the other kinds are friendships in an analogical sense,Literally, by way of resemblance to true friendship : see 3.7, note. since such friends are friends in virtue of a sort of goodness and of likenessPerhaps the words and of likeness are interpolated; the following clause explains goodness only. That utility is a sort of goodness is assumed. in them: insomuch as pleasure is good in the eyes of pleasure-lovers.
5
But these two secondary forms of friendship are not very likely to coincide: men do not make friends with each other both for utility and for pleasure at the same time, since accidental qualities are rarely found in combination.
