Page:On Friendship (Howe, 1915).pdf/30

 to incline us than society; and Aristotle says that good lawmakers have taken more care for friendship than for justice. Now the supreme point of its perfection is such a one as that; for in general all those friendships that pleasure or profit, or public or private ends, forge and nourish, are just so much less lovely and generous, and just so much less friendships, as they mix another cause and purpose and fruit with friendship besides itself. Nor do those four antique sorts, natural, social, hospitable, venerean, suffice, either separately or conjointly.

From children to their parents, it is rather respect. Friendship feeds on confidence, and that cannot exist between them because of too great disparity, and perhaps it would interfere with their natural duties: for neither can all the secret thoughts of parents be confided to their children, for fear of creating an unseemly familiarity; nor can the advice and reproofs which are among the first offices of friendship, be exercised by children toward their parents. There have been nations where it was the custom for children to kill their parents, and others where the parents killed their children, to avoid the