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THERE are many kinds of friendship and companionship which unite men in
very different ways in the bonds of love. For some a previous
recommendation makes to enter upon an intercourse first of acquaintance and
afterwards even of friendship. In the case of others some bargain or an
agreement to give and take something has joined them in the bonds of love.
Others a similarity and union of business or science or art or study has
united in the chain of friendship, by which even fierce souls become kindly
disposed to each other, so that those, who in forests and mountains delight
in robbery and revel in human bloodshed, embrace and cherish the partners
of their crimes. But there is another kind of love, where the union is from
the instincts of nature and the laws of consanguinity, whereby those of the
same tribe, wives and parents, and brothers and children are naturally
preferred to others, a thing which we find is the case not only with
mankind but with all birds and beasts. For at the prompting of a natural
instinct they protect and defend their offspring and their young ones so
that often they are not afraid to expose themselves to danger and death for
their sakes. Indeed those kinds of beasts and serpents and birds, which are
cut off and separated from all others by their intolerable ferocity or
deadly poison, as basilisks, unicorns and vultures, though by their very
look they are said to be dangerous to every one, yet among themselves they
remain peaceful and harmless owing to community of origin and fellow-
feeling. But we see that all these kinds of love of which we have spoken,
as they are common both to the good and bad, and to beasts and serpents,
certainly cannot last for ever. For often separation of place interrupts
and breaks them off, as well as forgetfulness from lapse of time, and the
transaction of affairs and business and words. For as they are generally
due to different kinds of connexions either of gain, or desires, or
kinship, or business, so when any occasion for separation intervenes they
are broken off.
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