Section 4: Contrast between true friendship and the other kinds

True friendship, then, is complete both in respect of duration and in all other respects. And in true friendship each gets from the other the same as, or something like, what he gives; which is what ought to happen between friends.

The friendship that exists because of enjoyment bears a resemblance to this kind. For good people are also pleasant to each other. So too does the friendship that exists because of usefulness. For the good are also useful to each other.

Between people who have pleasure or utility friendships, the friendships are most permanent when the friends get the same thing from each other; for example, enjoyment. Not only that, but they are most permanent when the friends get the same thing from the same source, as happens between witty people [who enjoy each other’s humor], but not as happens between lover and beloved. For lover and beloved do not enjoy the same things, but the love enjoys seeing the beloved and the beloved enjoys being taken care of by the lover. And when the bloom of youth passes, the friendship sometimes passes too, since the lover no longer finds pleasure in the sight of the beloved, and the beloved no longer gets taken care of by the lover. Yet in other cases lovers do remain friends, if their familiarity has led them to love each other’s characters, having similar characters themselves.

But those who exchange not pleasure but usefulness in their erotic relationships are both less truly friends and less constant. Those who are friends for the sake of usefulness tend to part ways when the advantage is at an end. For they were lovers not of each other but of profit.

Even average people may be friends of each other for the sake of enjoyment or usefulness, and these sorts of friendships can also exist between good people and bad people. Or someone who is neither good nor bad may be a friend of this sort to whatever kind of person. Clearly only good people, however, can be friends for their own sake [and have a true friendship]. For bad people do not delight in each other unless some advantage come of the relation.

Also, the friendship between good people is the only kind that is immune to slander. For it is not easy to trust any talk about a person who has long been tested by oneself. And it is among good people that trust and the feeling that “they would never wrong me” and all the other things that are demanded in true friendship are found. In the other kinds of friendship, however, there is nothing to prevent these evils from arising.

For people apply the name of “friends” even to those who are friends because of usefulness, just as they do when they say that allied states are “friendly,” for the alliances of states seem to aim at advantage. And people also apply the name of “friends” to those who love each other because of enjoyment, in which sense children are called friends. Therefore, we too must perhaps call such people friends, and say that there are several kinds of friendship–firstly and in the proper sense that of good who are friends because they are good, and by analogy the other kinds. For it is because of something good and something akin to what is found in true friendship that these others are friends, since even the pleasant is good for the lovers of pleasure.

But pleasure and utility friendships are not often united, nor do the same people become friends for the sake of utility and of pleasure. For things that are only incidentally connected are not often coupled together.

If we distribute them into these three kinds of friendship, bad people will only be friends for the sake of pleasure or of utility, in this being like one another. But good people can be friends for their own sake, that is, because of their goodness. These are friends without qualification, while the former are friends incidentally and through a resemblance to these.