MONTAIGNE
tyrants and the cowardice of peoples is adverse to it. In a word, all one can admit in favour of the Academy, is to say that it was a love terminating in friendship; which does not agree badly with the Stoic definition of love: Amorem conatum esse amicitia faciende ex pulchritudinis specie. (Love is the endeavour to form friendship out of an appearance of beauty.)
I return to my description of a more just and steady kind of friendship. Omnino amicitia, corroboratis jam confirmatisque et ingenis, et etatibus, judicanda sunt. (Friendships are to be considered entirely such, when the minds and the ages are both developed and settled.) For the rest, what we usually call friends and friendships are merely acquaintances and intimacies knit by some occasion or convenience, by means of which our souls speak together. In the friendship of which I write, they mix and blend in each other with so complete a mixing that they efface and never again find the seam that joined them. If you should press me to say why I loved him, I feel that it could be expressed only by answering, “Because it was he, because it was I.” There
exists after all my discussing and all I can say
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