Section 5: Friendship, the activity of friendship, and the feeling of friendliness

In the case of the virtues, some people _[5] are called good with respect to their disposition, others with respect to an activity. So too in the case of friendship. For those who spend their lives together enjoy each other’s company and benefit each other, while those who are asleep or separated by distance are not engaged in the activities of friendship, although they are disposed to do them.

Distance does not break off a friendship _[10] absolutely, but only the activity of it. But if the absence is lasting, it seems actually to make people forget their friendship. Hence there is the saying, “out of sight, out of mind.”

Neither old people nor annoying people seem to make friends easily. For there is little that is pleasant about them, and no one can spend their days _[15] with someone whose company is painful, or not enjoyable, since nature seems above all to avoid the painful and to aim at the pleasant.

Those who approve of each other but do not spend their lives together seem to have good will toward each other, rather than to be friends. For there is nothing so characteristic of friends as spending time together. People in need desire benefits. But even friends who are supremely happy desire _[20] to spend their time together, since solitude suits such people least of all. But people cannot live their lives together if they are not pleasant and do not enjoy the same things, as friends who are companions seem to do.

The truest friendship, then, is that between good people, as _[25] we have frequently said. For that which is without qualification good or pleasant seems to be lovable and desirable, and for each person that which is good or pleasant to him. And the good person is lovable and desirable to the good person for both these reasons.

Now it looks as if love is a feeling, while friendship a disposition. For love may be felt just as much towards lifeless things, but mutual love involves choice, _[30] and choice springs from a disposition. People wish well to those whom they love, for their sake, not as a result of feeling but as a result of a disposition.

In loving a friend people love what is good for themselves. For the good person in becoming a friend becomes something good for his friend. Each, then, both loves what is good for himself, and makes an equal _[35] return in goodwill and in pleasantness. For friendship is said to be equality, and these qualities are found most in the friendship of the good.