Section 10: How many friends should we have?

Should we, then, make as many friends as possible? Or, just as in the case of hospitality it is thought to be suitable advice that one should be ‘neither a man of many guests nor a man with none,’ will that apply to friendship as well; should a person neither be friendless nor have an excessive number of friends?

To friends made with a view to usefulness this saying would seem thoroughly applicable. For to do services to many people in return is a laborious task and life is not long enough for its performance. Therefore, friends in excess of those who are sufficient for our own life are superfluous, and hindrances to the noble life; so that we have no need of them. Also, when it comes to friends made with a view to enjoyment, few are enough, as a little seasoning in food is enough.

But as regards good friends, should we have as many as possible? Or is there a limit to the number of one’s friends, as there is to the size of a city-state? You cannot make a city-state of ten people, but if there are a hundred thousand it is a city-state no longer. But the proper number is presumably not a single number, but anything that falls between certain fixed points. So for friends too there is a determinate number one can have, perhaps the largest number with whom one can spend one’s life together. For we found that spending one’s life together is thought to be very characteristic of friendship. And that one cannot spend one’s life with many people and divide oneself up among them is plain.

Further, a person’s good friends must also be friends with each other, at least if they are all going to spend their days together. And it is difficult for this condition to be fulfilled with a large number.

It is also difficult to rejoice and to grieve in an intimate way with many people, for it may likely happen that you’ll have to be joyful with one friend and to mourn with another. Presumably, then, it is well not to seek to have as many friends as possible, but as many as are enough for the purpose of spending one’s life together. For it would seem actually impossible to be a great friend to many people. This is why one cannot be in love several people at once; erotic love is ideally a sort of excess of friendship, and that can only be felt towards one person. Therefore, great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people.

This seems to be confirmed in practice. For we do not find many people who are friends in a friendship of close companionship, and the famous friendships of this sort are always between two people. Those who have many friends and mix intimately with them all are thought to be no one’s friend, except in the way proper to fellow-citizens, and such people are also called “obsequious.” In the way proper to fellow-citizens, indeed, it is possible to be the friend of many and yet not be obsequious but a genuinely good man. But one cannot have a friendship based on virtue and on the character of the friends themselves with many people, and we must be content if we find even a few such.