Tractatus duo

in order to achieve these, they come together and unite. A true and Christian friend looks to none of these things, but cares primarily that in this friendship of theirs God is worshipped and one’s neighbor is loved. For this is the one thing that the pious care for and seek most of all throughout the entire course of their lives. But many ends and goals for contracting friendships can be suggested, from which, however, one is as it were the proper and principal one. This is that we might join ourselves to someone whom God himself has adorned with his gifts, and whom he shows and renders admirable to us. Therefore, the first conciliator of souls is the will of God, which impels our souls toward this. Then afterwards, the admiration of another’s virtue, to which we greatly desire to adhere and to be held dear. And because we almost always admire those virtues in which we find delight, and toward which we feel sparks have been placed in us by God, that is, toward which we believe ourselves to be more suited, it happens that a similarity of character and affections is recognized among those who contract a friendship, and the friends themselves have, by a certain silent testimony and more secret judgment, the same consensus regarding these matters.

Therefore, this third cause is of the greatest importance and intervenes in the forming of a friendship, namely the similarity of character and of the same pursuit. For to desire the same things and to refuse the same things, that is finally a firm friendship, and friends are usually delighted by the same things, and especially, with nature as their guide, they apply themselves to the pursuit of the same virtue.

For that parity of pursuit lays the first foundations of friendship. For the fact that we hope to be protected by our friends, and that they are admirable for their good

qualities and