The objects and the personal relationships with which friendship is concerned appear, as was said at the outset, Footnote 11.4. to be the same as those which are the sphere of justice. For in every partnership we find mutual rights of some sort, and also friendly feeling: one notes that shipmates and fellow-soldiers speak of each other as my friend,
and so in fact do the partners in any joint undertaking. But their friendship is limited to the extent of their association in their common business, for so also are their mutual rights as associates. Again, the proverb says Friends’ goods are common property,
and this is correct, since community is the essence of friendship.
Brothers have all things in common, and so do members of a comradeship Footnote 2See 5.3, note. ; other friends hold special possessions in common, more or fewer in different cases, inasmuch as friendships vary in degree. The claims of justice also differ in different relationships. The mutual rights of parents and children are not the same as those between brothers; the obligations of members of a comradeship not the same as those of fellow-citizens; and similarly with the other forms of friendship.
Injustice therefore also is differently constituted in each of these relationships: wrong is increasingly serious in proportion as it is done to a nearer friend. For example, it is more shocking to defraud a comrade of money than a fellow-citizen; or to refuse aid to a brother than to do so to a stranger; or to strike one’s father than to strike anybody else. Similarly it is natural that the claims of justice also should increase with the nearness of the friendship, since friendship and justice exist between the same persons and are co-extensive in range.
But all associations are parts as it were of the association of the State. Travellers for instance associate together for some advantage, namely to procure some of their necessary supplies. But the political association too, it is believed, was originally formed, and continues to be maintained, for the advantage of its members: the aim of lawgivers is the good of the community, and justice is sometimes defined as that which is to the common advantage.
Thus the other associations aim at some particular advantage; for example sailors combine to seek the profits of seafaring in the way of trade or the like, comrades in arms the gains of warfare, their aim being either plunder, or victory over the enemy or the capture of a city Footnote 3Literally plunder or victory or a city
; the last words may refer either to colonists or exiles who obtain a new abode by conquest, or to civil war; but the expression is improbable, and perhaps should be emended to or to defend the city.
; and similarly the members of a tribe or parish Footnote 4The bracketed sentences, as Cook Wilson points out, look like an interpolated fragment of a parallel version. [And some associations appear to be formed for the sake of pleasure,
for example religious guilds and dining-clubs, which are unions for sacrifice and social intercourse. But all these associations seem to be subordinate to the association of the State, which aims not at a temporary advantage but at one covering the whole of life.] combine to perform sacrifices and hold festivals in connection with them, thereby both paying honor to the gods and providing pleasant holidays for themselves. For it may be noticed that the sacrifices and festivals of ancient origin take place after harvest, being in fact harvest-festivals; this is because that was the season of the year at which people had most leisure.
All these associations then appear to be parts of the association of the State; and the limited friendships which we reviewed will correspond to the limited associations from which they spring.