“the inbreather,” the other “the listener.” Out of this custom sentimental relationships arose, which Plato approving wrote his famous descriptions of those pure and passionate attachments between persons of the same sex, known as “Platonic love.” With this sentimentality Aristotle did not sympathise, but yet there is no coldness in his picture of friendship. He asserts enthusiastically the glow of the heart which is caused by contemplating the actions of a virtuous friend (IX. ix. 5), and declares that without this element in life no one can be called truly happy. Lord Bacon’s splendid essay ‘Of Friendship’ may be compared with these pages; but Bacon’s account of the advantages of a friend is on a lower level and less philosophical than that given by Aristotle, who goes to the root of the matter in saying that what a friend really does for you is, by the joint operation of sympathy and contrast, of quasi identity and yet diversity—to intensify the sense of your personal existence, and to give you that vividness of vitality on which happiness depends (IX. ix. 7). In this proposition the two books culminate, but they are full of lucid distinctions, and also of high morality. Friendship (as has been seen above, p. 87) is represented by Aristotle as an utterly disinterested feeling, often calling for great self-sacrifice. Sometimes, he says, the good man may be called upon to die for his friends (IX. viii. 9); and as a delicate form of disinterestedness he inquires whether in some cases one ought not to give up to one’s friend, instead of seizing for one’s self, the opportunity of doing noble actions.
Almost the only matter of any importance in the
