The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

310 L/ELIUS; OR,
their inveterate enemies than to their complaisant
friends, as they frequently heard the truth from
the one, but never from the other ;
in short, the
great absurdity is that men are apt, in the instances
under consideration, to direct both their dislike and
their approbation to the wrong object. They hate
the admonition, and love the vice ; whereas they
ought, on the contrary, to hate the vice, and love the
admonition.
As nothing, therefore, is more suitable to the genius
and spirit of true friendship than to give and receive
advice to give it, I mean, with freedom, but without
rudeness, and to receive it not only without reluctance,
but with patience so nothing is more injurious to the
connexion than flattery, compliment, or adulation. I
multiply these equivalent terms, in order to mark with
stronger emphasis the detestable and dangerous character
of those pretended friends, who, strangers to the dictates
of truth, constantly hold the language which they are
sure will be most acceptable. But if counterfeit appear
ances of every species are base and dishonest attempts
to impose upon the judgment of the unwaiy, they are
more peculiarly so in a commerce of amity, and absolutely
repugnant to the vital principle of that sacred relation ;
for, without sincerity, friendship
is a mere name, that has
neither meaning or efficacy. It is the essential property
of this alliance to form so intimate a coalition between
the parties that they seem to be actuated, as it were, by
one common spirit but it is ;
impossible that this unity
of mind should be produced when there is one of them in
which it does not subsist even in his own person, who,
with a duplicity of soul which sets him at perpetual
variance from himself, assumes opposite sentiments and
opinions, as is most convenient to his present purpose.
Nothing in nature, indeed, is so pliant and versatile as
the genius of a flatterer, who always acts and pretends