street car or waiting for a train. It is independent of age, to a considerable extent of health, of weather, and of surroundings, our books being as accessible when we move to a place in which we are total strangers as in the home of our childhood; so that no one who loves reading need ever find any of his leisure dull.

II. The Love of Books

17. State the meaning of and explain the assertion of Emerson in his essay Success: ""Tis the good reader that makes the good book."

18. What is meant by the statement in the second paragraph of our essay: A man "feels his exclusion from [the best books] to accuse his way of living?"

19.

How can one acquire a love for, i. e., an appreciative understanding of the great books?

20.

21.

Apply the principles of habit to the love of reading.

III. The Choice of Books

Why does Emerson advise us to confine our reading to the famous books?

22. What is the relation between this advice and the advice: "Never read any book that is not a year old?" Why does Emerson urge us to confine our reading to the works of the greatest authors to the exclusion of what he calls the "crowd of mediocrities?"

23.

24. Why does he object to desultory reading? What is the alternative that he recommends?

25. How can this position be harmonized with the suggestion "Never read any [books] but what you like?"

26. Summarize in your own words Emerson's advice with regard to the choice of books and discuss in detail its value.

27. Discuss the possibility of finding time in a busy life to read the great books.

28. What are we to think of Emerson's advice to gain time for the standard authors by excluding the newspapers?

CHAPTER V--FRIENDSHIP

The study of friendship may be best conducted by an examination of Aristotle's famous treatise on the subject in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics. The selections which follow contain all the essentials of his discussion. The translation is, for the most part, the work of Dr. J. E. C. Welldon (TheNicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, The Macmillan Co., 1902) Bk. VIII, Ch. IV, Par. 3, and Ch. VI, Par. 1, last part, are taken from the translation of Mr. W. M. Hatch. Bk. VIII, Ch. V, Par. 4, Ch. VI, Par. 1, first part, Pars. 2 and 3, and Ch. VII are not a direct translation, but are from the detailed summaries prefixed to the discussion of each chapter in Professor J. A. Stewart's Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics.

Book VIII, Chap. 1. Friendship is indispensable to life. For nobody would choose to live without friends, although he were in possession of every other good. Nay, it seems that if people are rich and hold official and authoritative positions they have the greatest need of friends; for what is the good of having this sort of prosperity if one is denied the opportunity of beneficence, which is never so freely or so admirably exercised as towards friends? Or how can it be maintained in safety and security without friends? For the greater a person's importance, the more liable it is to disaster. In poverty and other misfortunes, we regard our friends as our only refuge. Again, friends are helpful to us, when we are young, as guarding us from error, and when we are growing old, as taking care of us, and supplying such deficiencies of action as are the consequences of physical weakness, and when we are in the prime of life, as prompting us to noble actions, according to the adage, "Two come

together;" for two people have a greater power both of intelligence and of action than either of the two by himself.

Nor is friendship indispensable only; it is also noble. We praise people who are fond of their friends, and it is thought to be a noble thing to have many friends, and there are some people who hold that to be a friend is the same thing as to be a good man.

Chap. II. It is possible, I think, to elucidate the subject of friendship or love, by determining what it is that is lovable or an object of love. For it seems that not everything is loved, but only that which is lovable, and that this is what is good or pleasant or useful.

There being three motives of friendship or love, it must be observed that we do not apply the term "friendship" or "love" to the affection felt for inanimate things. The reason is (1) that they are incapable of reciprocating affection, and (2) that we do not wish their good; for it would, I think, be ridiculous to wish the good, e. g., of wine; if we wish it at all, it is only in the sense of wishing the wine to keep well, in the hope of enjoying it ourselves. But it is admitted that we ought to wish our friend's good for his sake, and not for our own. If we wish people good in this sense, we are called well-wishers, unless our good wishes are returned; such reciprocal well-wishing is called friendship or love.

But it is necessary, I think, to add, that the well-wishing must not be unknown. A person often wishes well to people whom he has not seen, but whom he supposes to be virtuous or useful; and it is possible that one of these persons may entertain the same feeling towards him. Such people then, it is clear, wish well to one another; but they cannot be properly called friends, as their disposition is unknown to each other. It follows that, if they are to be friends, they must be well-disposed to each other, and must wish each other's good from one of the motives which have been assigned, and that each of them must know the fact of the other's wishing him well.

Chap. III. But as the motives of friendship are specifically different, there will be a corresponding difference in the affections and friendships.

The kinds of friendship, therefore, will be three, being equal in number to the things which are lovable, or are objects of friendship or love, as every such object admits of a reciprocal affection between two persons, each of whom is aware of the other's love.

People who love each other wish each other's good in the point characteristic of their love [i. e., they wish each other to be virtuous, or pleasant, or useful]. Accordingly those whose mutual love is based upon utility do not love each other for their own sakes, but only in so far as they derive some profit one from another. It is the same with those whose love is based upon pleasure. Thus we are fond of witty people, not as possessing a certain character, but as being pleasant to ourselves. People, then, whose love is based upon utility, are moved to affection by a sense of their own profit, and people whose love is based upon pleasure, by a sense of their own pleasure; and they love a person not for being what he is in himself, but for being useful or pleasant to them. These friendships, then, are only friendships in an accidental sense; for the person is not loved as being what he is, but as being a source either of profit or of pleas

ure.

Accordingly such friendships are easily dissolved, if the persons do not continue always the same; for they abandon their love if they cease to be pleasant or useful to each other. But utility and pleasure are not permanent qualities; they vary at different times. Accordingly the motive of the friendship being done away, the friendship itself is dissolved, as it was dependent upon that motive.

Chap. IV. The perfect friendship or love is the friendship or love of people who are good, and alike in virtue; for these people are alike in wishing each other's good, in so far as they are good, and they are good in themselves. But it is people who wish the good of their friends for their friend's sake that are in the truest sense friends, as their

friendship is the consequence of their own character, and is not an accident. Their friendship, therefore, continues as long as their virtue, and virtue is a permanent quality.

Again, each of them is good in an absolute sense, and good in relation to his friend. For good men are not only good in an absolute sense, but serve each other's interest. They are pleasant, too; for the good are pleasant in an absolute sense, and pleasant in relation to one another, as everybody finds pleasure in such actions as are proper to him, and the like, and all good people act alike or nearly alike.

Friendship of this kind we consider, with good reason, to be permanent, since it combines in itself all the characteristics which friends should have. Every friendship is based on goodness or on pleasure and implies a certain resemblance. Now in this perfect form all these requisites are present, and present, too, in virtue of the character of those concerned; in it we get resemblance between the friends and the remaining conditions; to wit, absolute goodness and absolute pleasantness: these are the highest objects of affection; consequently, where these are, there will be love and friendship in their highest and best forms.

Friendships of this kind are likely to be rare; for such people are few. They require time and familiarity too; for, as the adage puts it, it is impossible for people to know one another until they have consumed the proverbial salt together; nor can people admit one another to friendship, or be friends at all, until each has been proved lovable and trustworthy to the other.

People who are quick to treat one another as friends, wish to be friends but are not so really, unless they are lovable and know each other to be lovable; for the wish to be friends may arise in a minute, but not friendship.

Chap. V. This friendship, then, is perfect in point of time and in all other respects; and each friend receives from the other the same or nearly the same treatment in all respects, as ought to be the case.