§ 7. Comparison of Friendship and Sexual Love

40. Love produced by sexual passion regularly joins persons of different sex, and of itself is directed toward copulation. Sometimes, however, a certain quasi-separation occurs whereby, when the will for the sexual act has been laid aside or omitted, two persons of the same or even of different sex pursue one another with an affection similar to that of spouses.

Often in colleges and girls' boarding schools these excessively tender affections join two adolescent males or two girls. Concerning these flames, it is useful to ask in what manner love of this sort can be distinguished from the noble affection of friendship ¹.

¹ On this argument one may consult Le amicizie di collegio, by Obici and Marchesini.

Love implies the mutual possession of two persons, by which one seems to be made, as it were, from two. Hence it excludes others and is easily afflicted with jealousy; it claims a certain right of stability and fidelity; and, because of the moral fusion of the persons, while one shows himself benevolent toward the other, he seems at the same time to love himself, almost as parents procure the cause and interests of their children as their own. Hence love has been called "an egoism for two."

Friendship, on the contrary, permits the causes to remain separate; it does not repel others, though they must be few and select, as associates in friendship; nor does it think or allege that it possesses a certain right to perseverance distinct from the natural effect of constancy; but it shows to the friend a purer benevolence, more free from self-love.

Regard for age is much less in friendship than in love.

Since love ought of itself to exist between persons of different sex, it is accustomed to seek a different rather than a similar disposition: it is wont to arise between two persons, one of whom, the stronger, dominates the other, the weaker and softer.

Love demands physical compatibility, whereas physical endowments are neither necessary to friendship nor can they suffice for it.

Friendship arises gradually from moral qualities that have been perceived, while love sometimes bursts forth from a sudden and unforeseen cause, as if from the touch of lightning.

While friendship preserves one and the same placid tenor, love is solicitous and anxious; it repeatedly seeks declarations of affection; it has various alternations of suspicions, quarrels, and then restored peace ²; it seeks sight, embraces, kisses, and touches; it delights to act secretly, to speak in a low voice, and to cover itself with mysterious veils. They also observe that the lover, but not the friend, is prone to express affection in letters, or rather in little letters, and to write the name of the beloved person everywhere.

² Compare Cicero, Ad Atticum, 2, 24, 1; Tusculanes, 4, 35, 75.

Finally, concerning a love which prepares no way for marriage, a certain scruple is conceived as concerning a thing less honorable and less fitting, which lovers strive to dispel by various excuses, sometimes very subtle ones, whereas friendship is fostered with serene countenance and quiet conscience.