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different dispositions, and brothers also: this is my son, this is my kinsman; but he is a barbarian, a villain, or a fool. And then, too, in proportion as these friendships are enjoined upon us by natural law and obligation, there is less of our own choice and free will in them; and our free will has no product which is more properly its own than affection and friendship. It is not that I have not had in this direction all possible experience, for I had the best father that ever lived and the most indulgent, even in his extreme old age, and being of a family famous and exemplary for generations in this matter of brotherly concord, —
(b) et ipse
Notus in fratres animi paterni.[1]
(a) To compare with it the affection for women, although it proceeds from our own choice, is impossible; it can not be placed in the same category. Its flame, I admit, —
neque enim est dea nescia nostri
Quæ dulcem curis miscet amaritiem,[2] —
is more active, hotter, and fiercer; but it is a reckless and fickle flame, wavering and changing, fever-like, subject to risings and fallings; and it holds but a nook in us. In friendship there is a general and universal warmth, temperate, moreover, and uniform, a constant and settled warmth, all sweetness and smoothness, in which there is nothing of roughness or poignancy. What is more, in love there is but a mad craving for what eludes us.
Come segue la lepre il cacciatore
Al freddo, al caldo, alla montagna, al lito;
Ne piu l’estima poi che presa vede,
Et sol dietro a chi fugge affretta il piede.[3]
As soon as it enters into the bounds of friendship, that is to say, into full agreement of desires, it languishes and weak-
- ↑ One famed for fatherly affection toward his brothers. — Horace, Odes, II, 2.6. Montaigne supplied the words Et ipse.
- ↑ For I am not unknown to the goddess who mingles a sweet bitterness with the torments of love. — Catullus, LXVIII,17.
- ↑ So the hunter follows the hare, in cold and in heat, on the mountain and by the shore; he no longer cares for it when it has become his prey, and he pursues only that which flees. — Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, X, 7.