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

As in regard to the virtues some people are called good with respect to their state of character, others with respect to an activity. So too in the case of friendship. For those who spend their lives together delight in each other and confer benefits on each other, but 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 absolutely, but only the activity of it. But if the absence is lasting, it seems actually to make people forget their friendship, hence 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 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 to each other, rather than to be actually 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 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 of the good, as 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 were a feeling, friendship a state of character. For love may be felt just as much towards lifeless things, but mutual love involves choice and choice springs from a state of character. People wish well to those whom they love, for their sake, not as a result of feeling but as a result of a state of character.

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 return in goodwill and in pleasantness. For friendship is said to be equality, and both of these are found most in the friendship of the good.