Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/336

314 unto all patterns, and accommodate himself to so many natures, and will not rather be ready to laugh at the poet Theognis, who giveth this lesson:

And yet this change and transmutation of the said polype or pourcuttle fish, entereth not deeply in, but appeareth superficially in the skin, which by the closeness or laxity thereof, as he draws it in or lets it out, receiveth the defluctions of the colours from those bodies that are near unto it; whereas amities do require that the manners, natures, passions, speeches, studies, desires and inclinations may be conformable; for otherwise to do were the property of a Proteus, who was neither fortunate nor yet very good and honest, but who by enchantment and sorcery could eftsoons transform himself from one shape to another in one and the same instant; and even so he that entertaineth many friends must of necessity be conformable to them all; namely, with the learned and studious, to be ever reading; with professors of wrestling, to bestrew his body with dust (as they do) for to wrestle; with hunters, to hunt; with drunkards, to quaff and carouse; with ambitious citizens, to sue and mung for offices, without any settled mansion (as it were) of his own nature for his conditions to make abode in. And like as natural philosophers do hold: That the substance or matter that hath neither form nor any colour, which they call materia prima, is a subject capable of all forms, and of the own nature so apt to alter and change, that sometimes it is ardent and burning, otherwhiles it is liquid and moist; now rare and of an airy substance, and afterwards again gross and thick, resembling the nature of earth; even so must the mind applied to this multiplicity of friends, be subject to many passions, sundry conditions, divers affections pliable, variable and apt to change from one fashion to another. Contrariwise, simple friendship and amity between twain requireth a staid mind, a firm and constant nature, permanent and abiding always in one place, and retaining still the same fashions; which is the reason that a fast and assured friend is very geason and hard to be found.