De Amicitia, Scipios Dream | Page 2

his friend's virtues from the unfading image phototyped
on his own loving memory. In other matters too Cicero goes back to the
time of Laelius and assumes his point of view assigning to him just the
degree of foresight which he probably possessed and making not the
slightest reference to the very different aspect in which he himself had
learned to regard and was wont to represent the personages and events
of that earlier period. Thus while Cicero traced the downfall of the
republic to changes in the body politic that had taken place or were
imminent and inevitable when Scipio died he makes Laelius perceive
only a slight though threatening deflection from what had been in the
earlier time [Footnote 1]. So too though Cicero was annoyed more than
by almost any other characteristic of his age by the prevalence of the
Epicurean philosophy and ascribed to it in a very large degree the

demoralization of men in public life with Laelius the doctrines of this
school are represented as they must have been in fact as new and
unfamiliar. In time Laelius is here made to say not a word which he
being the man that he was and at the date assumed for this dialogue
might not have said himself; and it may be doubted whether a report of
one of his actual conversations would have seemed more truly genuine.
This is a rare gift often sought indeed yet sought in vain not only by
dramatists who have very [Footnote 1 Deflexit jam aliquantul im]
seldom attained it but by authors of a very great diversity of type and
culture. One who undertakes to personate a character belonging to an
age not his own hardly ever fails of manifest anachronisms. The author
finds it utterly impossible to fit the antique mask so closely as not now
and then to show through its chinks his own more modern features,
while this form of internal evidence never fails to betray an intended
forgery however skilfully wrought. On the other hand there is no surer
proof of the genuineness ot a work purporting to be of an earlier but
alleged to be of a later origin than the absence of all tokens of a time
subsequent to the earliest date claimed for it. [Footnote: Thus among
the many proofs of the genuineness of our canonical Gospels perhaps
none is more conclusive than the fact that though evidently written by
unskilled men they contain not a trace or token of certain opinions
known to have been rife even before the close of the first Christian
century; while the (so called) apocryphal Gospels bear, throughout,
such vestiges of their later origin as would neutralize the strongest
testimony imaginable in behalf of their primitive antiquity.]
In connection with this work it should be borne in mind that the special
duties of friendship constituted an essential department of ethics in the
ancient world and that the relation of friend to friend was regarded as
on the same plane with that of brother to brother. No treatise on morals
would have been thought complete had this subject been omitted. Not a
few modern writers have attempted the formal treatment of friendship
but while the relation of kindred minds and souls has lost none of its
sacredness and value, the establishment of a code of rules for it ignores
on the one hand the spontaneity of this relation, and on the other hand,
its entire amenableness to the laws and principles that should restrict

and govern all human intercourse and conduct.
Shaftesbury, in his 'Characteristics,' in his exquisite vein of irony sneers
at Christianity for taking no cognizance of friendship either in its
precepts or in its promises. Jeremy Taylor, however, speaks of this
feature of Christianity as among the manifest tokens of its divine origin,
and Soame Jenyns takes the same ground in a treatise expressly
designed to meet the objections and cavils of Shaftesbury and other
deistical writers of his time. These authors are all in the right and all in
the wrong, as to the matter of fact. There is no reason why Christianity
should prescribe friendship which is a privilege, not a duty, or should
essay to regulate it, for its only ethical rule of strict obligation is the
negative rule which would lay out for it a track that shall never interfere
with any positive duty selfward, manward or Godward. But in the life
of the Founder of Christianity, who teaches, most of all, by example,
friendship has its apogee,--its supreme pre-eminence and honor. He
treats his apostles and speaks of and to them, not as mere disciples but
as intimate and dearly beloved friends, among these there are three with
whom he stands in peculiarly near relations, and one of the three