Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/239

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same servants, without dividing them; what a grief is it that they, thus fallen out, should part their friends, their hosts and guests, and in one word, make all things that be common among other brethren, private, and whatsoever should be familiar and acceptable, to become contrary and odious? Over and besides, here is another inconvenience and mischief which there is no man so simple but he must needs conceive and understand: That ordinary friends and table companions may be gotten and stolen (as it were) from others; alliance and acquaintance there may be had new, if the former be lost, even as armour, weapons and tools may be repaired if they be worn, or new made if the first be gone; but to recover a brother that is lost, it is not possible, no more than to make a new hand, if one be cut away, or to set in another eye in the place of that which is plucked out of the head: and therefore well said that Persian lady, when she chose rather to save the life of her brethren than of her children: For children (quoth she) I may have more, but since my father and mother be both dead, brother shall I never have.

But what is to be done, will some man say, in case one be matched with a bad brother? First, this we ought evermore to remember, that in all sorts of amities there is to be found some badness; and most true is that saying of Sophocles: Who list to search throughout mankind. More bad than good is sure to find.

No kindred there is, no society, no fellowship, no amity and love, that can be found sincere, sound, pure, and clear from all faults. The Lacedæmonian who had married a wife of little stature: We must (quoth he) of evils chuse ever the least; given so in mine advice a man may very well and wisely give counsel unto brethren, to bear rather with the most domestical imperfections and the infirmities of their own blood, than to try those of strangers; for as the one is blameless because it is necessary, so the other is blameworthy, for that it is voluntary: nor neither table-friend and fellow-gamester, nor play-fere of the same age, nor yet host or guest,

Is bound with links (of brass by hand not wrought) Which shame by kind hath forg'd, and cost us nought,

but rather that friend who is of the same blood, who had his nourishment and bringing up with us, begotten of one father, and who lay in the same mother's womb; unto whom it seemeth that Virtue herself doth allow connivancy and pardon of some