Love & Friendship
Lecture 20: The Habit and Act of Friendship; Trust and Living Together

Transcript
================================================================================

So he's taking delight in her beauty, and she's, what, attaching him because of his, what, money or usefulness. And I remember this example of this years ago was in the newspaper. And kind of a fact, you know, which man in a young, beautiful thing, and he's renting an airplane, right, to fly through the sky for their marriage ceremony. I remember just looking at, just a young, very young at the time, I said, but gee, that's not going to last, I said. And sure enough, you know, in a few months, the whole thing is over with, right? And she's getting alimony, so that's what she wants. But my brother, my brother tells me a long time of being in Chicago, coming back and just eating in a restaurant. And in come these businessmen with their good-looking secretaries, right? So the secretaries are there just, you know, to make the meeting more pleasant and so on. But my brother happened to be close enough to be over here as this conversation at the end. And the businessman is being over, the secretary says, now we'll go shopping afterwards. You know, that's a payoff, right? So she's there to please him and maybe please other businessmen, too. And he doesn't please her, but he's going to, you know, take her out shopping and let her buy a few dresses or whatever it is that she wants to buy. Okay, those things are not as, what, long-lasting, he says. But those who are friends because of the useful, right, cease to be together when the useful, what, ceases, right? For they were not friends of each other, but only of, what, the prophet, what they're going to get out of the other person, huh? And so you see that especially, for example, in the friendships among politicians, right? You know, I need you to balance a ticket, right? Or I need you to appeal to the segment of the population there so I can get elected, right, huh? But then very soon the times will happen to be not useful to me anymore, right? And so they compare that to the friendships among nations, huh, where England is the, France are friends in the wars with Germany, right? But in the Napoleonic wars it's England and Germany are friends against France, right? So some English statesman said we have no permanent friends, we have no permanent interests. And now it may be useful, like if it's useful to England to keep a balance of power in Europe, right? At one time it may be opposed to France and allied with Germany or Austria, everyone wants to help her fight France. Another time when Germany is getting out of hand, then she's allied with France, right? So those things can change quite quickly, right? And so the useful friendship is probably the least persistent, right? Okay. Now, in the next to the last paragraph, he's coming to this question that we had raised before. Can the bad be friends of the bad, right? Or can only the good be friends of the good, huh? Well, Aristotle's going to say you have to distinguish, right? Because there are three kinds of friendship. It is possible, then, he says, for the bad to be friends of each other on account of pleasure, right? Or on account of usefulness. In that sense, there can be friendship among the, what? Bad, right? In those two kinds of friendship. And even the good can be friends of the bad in the sense of, what? Useful friendship, right? And even in terms of pleasure, right? Okay. But it is clear that only the good can be friends on account of themselves. This is the friendship that was the highest, right? Where the friend is loved as such, right? And not because simply of the pleasure he gives you or the usefulness that he has for you. For the bad do not rejoice in themselves if some utility usefulness does not come about. So you, what, you get the car out there and you get the motor running, right? And then I'll come out, right? With the money. I need somebody, you know, they're ready to zoom off, right? So you're useful to me and I'm useful to you, right? You'll get your cut of the bank robbery and so on, huh? Okay. So I'm not attached to you because... If you, in which way, yourself, or even because you're pleasant to me, right, but because you're useful to have somebody out there. When I was down in Kentucky, I visited this little automobile place, you know, the little museum of automobiles there. And Bonnie and Clyde, I guess, Clyde of it, had written to the automobile people saying, if you like their car, give them a good getaway, you know? So they had this message from him. They let him come in. You look like a PT cruiser, right? Now, in the bottom paragraph, he talks a little bit about trust, right? And when I teach this course and I ask students, is a friend someone you can trust? They usually say, what? Yes, right? If you can't trust somebody, is he really a friend? No. See? I think kind of spontaneously people will see that point, right? Well, in the highest kind of friendship, you can trust the other person because of his virtue, huh? And you have some experience with the person that he really is virtuous, huh? But if the friendship is based merely upon pleasure or merely upon usefulness, right? Well, then somebody might say, well, I think she's seeing somebody else on the side, right? Or I think he's seeing somebody else on the side, right? And I might say, well, I don't know. Maybe this is so, right? You tend to be concerned. You tend to be concerned. You hear these things, right? And don't know what to believe them. Or maybe you believe them a little bit and you're not suspicious, right? And you see that in Shakespeare's play there at the end, you know, when Anthony and Cleopatra, you know, are allied against Octavius Caesar and Caesar defeats them, right? And then, of course, Anthony's not sure that Cleopatra might not, what? Set him aside and not go with the winner, right? She's done that before. He's not the first lover she's had, right? So there's a little lack of, what? Trust there, you see, okay? And again, Cleopatra, you know, earlier in the play when Anthony and Octavius are kind of, you know, trying to get along and so on, and as a marriage of convenience or a marriage to cement them, Anthony's going to marry the sister of Octavius, right? Well, Cleopatra, I mean. You see? You know, there can't be that complete trust between the two of them, because their friendship is based merely on pleasure. And the same way with, what? Usefulness, right? And so a politician, you know, is promising, you know, I've been thinking about you for the vice presidency, or I've been thinking about you for the vice presidency. And he tells it to several people, right? And, you know, somebody else might be more useful to you, right? And so I can't complete the, what? Trust, you know, and I might give some belief to these rumors out here that you're, you know, been talking to so-and-so, maybe about being his vice presidential candidate or throwing your support to him and so on. So he says, Once in a while, you know, as a professor, you know, I get these students playing these jokes on you, you know? So one time, somebody called the house, see, and I had a young girl talking on the phone, and wanted to speak to me. And my wife says, And she says, Who are you, my wife? It's just his wife, you know? And she says, The phone couldn't, you know? It was some kind of a joke to kids, you know, see? But my wife, my wife says it's a joke, right? Because she trusts me completely, you know? But I mean, if we didn't have that trust, right? Yeah, well. Then, you know, who was that, you know? Oh, no. Then you're right away, you know? Okay. Wicked. That's really wicked, yeah. I know she says over a long time, because even if you have two men who are virtuous, it takes time for them to become friends, right? Because I can't know that you are virtuous, right? Or have this certainty that you're virtuous without having seen the way you act. over a course of time, right? I may have the wrong impression of you, right? For there is trust in these, and never to have been unjust, whatever else is deemed worthy of true friendship. I was reading there in the life of Abraham Lincoln, you know, that at that time, at least in Illinois legal things, if the chief, if the justice was, what, incapacitated or, not incapacitated, but unable to be there this particular time, for some reason or another, right? They would select a lawyer to, what, step into the... Yeah. Later on, they made this against the law, but, I mean, that's... And the guy you would choose would be Abraham Lincoln, right? Oh, my man. Because he was, what, trusted, right, for his, you know, they'd seen him, you know, over and over again in the courtroom, and how honest a guy he was, huh? And so, they would trust him. For there is trust in these, and never to have been unjust, and whatever else is deemed worthy to friendship. But nothing prevents such things coming to be in others, that is, say, in the friendships based merely on pleasure, or those based on, what, usefulness, right, huh? Okay. So, these Hollywood actors and actresses, you know, that are just getting married because of pleasure, right? And going out of these marriages all the time, right, huh? Okay. So, they can easily believe that so-and-so is getting interested in somebody else, you know, that he's playing opposite in the movie or something, right? Now, on the top of page six, come back to something I mentioned, I think, before. Or, if you look at Cicero's little work on friendship, right, he wants to limit the word friendship only to that between the, what, virtuous, right? And Aristotle, of course, would agree that that's the only full and complete and perfect friendship, right? But in some lesser sense, we can call these other associations friendship, too. And they do have some likeness, right, more or less to the true and perfect friendship, huh? Okay? Aristotle doesn't depart entirely from the, what, custom that we do in daily life called these people friends, right? Okay? So, if you're a little boy or girl who's been playing with some other boy or girl that they have a good time with, right? Like I mentioned how parents very often say to the kid when they come back, you know, from playing with so-and-so across the street, did you have a good time? Okay? But it's really a friendship of what? Of pleasure, right, huh? Okay? They enjoy playing together, right? Doing this game or building together, whatever they do together, right? Okay? But since men call friends, right? Meaning men in general, right? But since men call friends also those on account useful, just as cities, right, huh? So we speak of friendship between, what, different nations, even though, right? Even though it's based upon, what, usefulness. This is that comparison I was saying before, right? The likeness of the friendships between nations, which are based on usefulness, and some and many friendships among human beings that are based on usefulness. So just as in cities we speak of, you know, we have friendly relations with England, right? Not so friendly with France right now. So likewise we could use the word friendship, right? Or these associations whose basis is more usefulness, right? For alliances seem to come to be in cities on account useful. And also those loving each other on account of pleasure. Just as children, in my example, right? Perhaps, huh? You just look careful there, right? Perhaps we also ought to call those such friends, right? Okay? But the only friendship in a, what, weaker, diminished, much lesser, what, sense, yeah. Okay? But he goes back then to the point that we made in the third reading, that there are many forms of friendship, right? And only one of them is friendship in a full and perfect sense. And notice in those terms that we have in Thomas' treatise, we're original with Thomas, right? But he distinguished two kinds of love. The love of one. right and the love of friendship it was called right and that was the name given to the love of wishing well right okay but the fact that they called that the love of what friendship right meant that they were thinking of friendship in the full sense where the two friends wish well to each other in themselves right as opposed to the friendships based on pleasure or usefulness that i'm your friend because i would i want to get pleasure from you or i want to get some utility from you and so that's the love of wanting right the love of wanting rather than the love of friendship that's the kind of the names are given to those two loves huh one love is more characteristic of the lesser friendships the love of wanting right i want a recommendation from you right so you're useful to me you can recommend me and i need recommendation right okay so i have the love of wanting for you huh see or i like to hear your jokes right huh okay um i like to drive right in your fast car you know with you you know it's such a good looking car you know so i have the love of wanting you know huh and uh uh my brother mark and i were teaching out st mary's college it's kind of funny we were both very young for our age right so you could almost you know think we were a student right oh that's it and when he came out this one one year my brother mark had a car i didn't have a car yet and marcus's car really broke down and we had to get a car kind of quickly before we left and the gasoline station the filling station we call it in the west um that we did the regular business with a guy working there we knew pretty well he was going to go work for ford company huh and so he had to get rid of his old mobile because that was what ford makes and he wanted to sell the old mobile we needed cars so it was just a convenient thing right was a kind of a flashy you know car red and this and so on and so we drove on campus with this car we looked like a couple real hot you know college students and some guy comes up he goes that's really friendly with us you know my brother let him know pretty quickly that he was professor and not a fellow student but this is a love of what of wanting you know let's get with these guys you know and we'll be driving on campus they may be noticing us and the girls will be noticing us about this stuff we're the new philosophy epicurean yeah used to nickname us the pale-faced twins see because we probably in the house studying too much and give us uh-huh california's son okay so aristotle says but there are many forms of friendship right huh and first and chiefly is that of the good as good right okay that's friendship in the first sense right and in the full sense right they said that's the one the only one that cicero wants to call friendship right the rest over can be called friendship by kind of likeness insofar as there is something good and something like in this way they are friends okay because pleasure in some way this is something good right and and usefulness is something good and insofar as in some way resemble that first and chief friendship they are not purely by chance called friends right for the pleasant is good to those who love pleasure but these are not all joined together in order to the same become friends and account of useful and account of the pleasant for things by accident are not all joined together friendship then being divided into these forms the bad will be friends through pleasure or the useful being alike in the same but the good will be friends through themselves insofar as they are good or we saw that back in the earlier reading these then will be friends simply or without qualification but those by happening and insofar as they are alike in some way right like he's pointing out earlier right that the virtuous are pleasant to each other right and are also useful to each other right so There's some likeness of the friendship of pleasure and the friendship of likeness to the friendship based on virtue, right? And so it's not purely by chance that they are called friends. But they're not friends simply without qualification, but by happening, he says, huh? Okay? Because you happen to please me today, right? I mean, not tomorrow, but today you happen to do so, right? I'm going to get tired of you tomorrow, right? Or you happen to be useful to me, right? Today, right? Okay? If you're an auto mechanic, you might be useful to me someday, right? Other day, I have nothing to do with you, really. You see? Okay? Or you happen to be useful to recommend me, you're in a position to recommend me, right? Or to say a word for me, right? Okay? Now, let's turn to reading five. Now, this is a little different topic, huh? Just keep in mind now the topics he's covered so far. In the first reading, he talked about, the reasons for considering friendship in this part of philosophy, right? Why we should consider it. It's such an important thing, huh? And then, in the second reading, he had worked out a definition of friendship, right? And then, in the third reading, he had, what? The three divisions. Indistinguished, huh? The three kinds of friendship among equals, right? In the fourth one, he compared them, huh? Especially compared the lower ones to the higher ones, right? I'm pointing out that the highest one is the only one that's simply friendship, right? But the others, by happening, are friendship, and they have a certain... And they can be called friendship by certain likeness to the perfect friendship. Big one, huh? Okay, now he's going to compare friendship with its act, and also, you might say, a little bit with its habit, huh? Okay? And, of course, he recalls something that would be familiar to you if you had studied the earlier parts of Nicomachean Ethics. Just as in the virtues, some are called good according to habit, and some according to act, right? So, we might say a man is just, meaning that he has the habit of justice, right? Or you might say that what a man does is just, right? I say you're just when you pay what you owe and so on, right? Okay? So, sometimes it's said to be just because of a habit, other times because of a, what? An act, right? Okay? And there's, of course, a connection between that habit and that act, right? Because in the case of the moral virtues, the habit is acquired by repeated acts, huh? So, it's by doing just things that we become a just man, and by doing courageous things that we become courageous. We acquire the habit, in other words, of the moral virtues by repeated acts, huh? But vice versa, once one has acquired the habit, one can do those same acts better and more firmly and more pleasure, right? So, there's a connection there between the habit and the, what, act, huh? But they're not the same thing, right? And maybe if I start, you know, eating and drinking a little bit more than I should, and then tomorrow I eat a little bit more than I should, and so on, I could lose my temperance, right? Okay? And the same way if I start to, you know, chisel a little bit here and a little bit there and go on, right? I might lose my habit, right? So, there's a connection between the habit and the act, huh? Okay? And a somewhat different connection between the habit and the act when you're acquiring the habit, right? And after you've acquired the habit, right? Okay? Because it's more difficult and there's a certain instability in my doing the just thing before I've acquired the virtue of justice, huh? But once I've acquired the virtue, then I can do that act with this instability and with more pleasure and more perfectly, huh? Okay? So, Rostovsky calling that, right? And he said we're going to make a similar distinction, right? We can distinguish between the... the habit of friendship, right? And then the what? The act of friendship, huh? And they're not the same thing, right? And then what's the connection between the two, right? Just as in the virtue, some are called good according to habit and some according to act, right? Okay? So I could speak of a courageous man, right? Meaning that he has a habit of courage, right? He has a virtue of courage. Or I could say he's courageous because he's doing something courageous, right? Okay? So also in friendship, right? For those living together, right? Enjoy each other and bring about good things for each other. But those sleeping or separated in places do not act, right? Okay? However, they are disposed to act friendly in that way. And habit is a what? Firm disposition, right? Okay? For the places do not destroy the friendship simply, but the what? Act, right? So if I'm separated from you in place, I'm down in Kentucky and you people are up here, you see? Then I can't talk to you and be friendly with you in terms of the act, right? But do I cease to be your friend? No, no. Although as you go on to say later on, if there are no friendly acts being performed between us, right? Then the friendship could what? The habit could be weakened and even what? Disappear, right? Okay? So he says, however, if the absence comes to be for a long time, it seems to make the friendship what? Forgotten, right? Okay? You see, there's a young people sometimes, you know, where they're friends in high school, but they go to different colleges, let's say, right? And then they kind of maybe drift apart, huh? Because they don't have any, what? Of the acts of friendship, right? Okay? So we often hear people say, well, we've kind of drifted apart, you know, over the years now because you haven't seen them, you know? Once it has been said, the lack of conversation, right? And conversation maybe could be taken in a broader sense and just speaking together, but lack of being together and so on, destroys many, what? Friendships, right? Okay? That's true of a lot of habits, huh? Someone's told me this guy, he knew, I guess in the seminary, I think, he taught Greek, but he didn't teach it very often. Oh, yeah. He said, every time he taught Greek, he had learned it again. Oh, right, right, yeah. And sometimes, you know, you find out when people are taking, say, a language, a foreign language in college, you know, if they take it to the first year, they should take the second year right away, you know, rather than, you know, wait until the first year has disappeared, huh? Yeah. Okay. Now, what's the next paragraph and how does it fit into there? Well, he's talking about those who, speaking roughly, are not well disposed or are not capable too much of the acts of friendship, right? Okay. So he says, neither the old nor the harsh, right, seem to be fitted for friendship, for there is little that is pleasant in these, huh? Okay. So the old man has all kinds of aches and pains and complaining about things and so on, right? Other people are kind of, what, severe and harsh in their character, right? And so it's not pleasant to be with these people, right? And no one is able to pass the day together with one painful or, what? Not pleasant, right? For nature seems especially to feel, to flee the painful and to desire the pleasant. Okay. He says, those approving of each other, but not living together, right? Seeing more to wish well to each other than to be friends. And here he seems to be almost, what, touching upon something more required for friendship than was brought out in the definition, right? Yeah. You see? If you and I wish well to each other, that would seem to be friendship in the first chapter. So if you and I wish well to each other, but we'd rather not live together, right? Spend time together. We might still wish well to each other, but we're really friends fully, you see? Well, notice the insistence he gives here upon living together. For nothing belongs more to friends than living together, right? For those in need want usefulness, but even the blessed to spend the day together, right? Now what about the day of eternity? What about heaven there, right? Is that true? Even there, right? The blessed need nothing, right? And yet they, what? Are going to be looking at God together, right? And praising God together, right? Okay. For it is suitable least of all to these to be solitaire, but it is not possible to live together if they are not pleasant, or do not enjoy the same things which companionship seems to, what? Have, right, huh? So if you want to listen to rock and roll, and I want to listen to Mozart, we could wish well to each other, but don't want to live together, huh? You know, you'd be playing that junk every day. When I worked in the package store, you know, sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, I'd get the Metropolitan Opera, right? Not that I cared too much, but it was Mozart, I wanted to hear it, right? Well, we were a friend with the policeman who worked in the plaza there in Worcester. So the cop would come in, but what he wants to hear is what the baseball game is doing, right? And that Mozart would be up. He said, I'm going to shoot that radio out, he'd say, you know. It's a joke, you know. So how come you live together if I want to listen to the Mozart opera, and you want to listen to the baseball game, right? See, last night there, they had the Yankee Red Sox game on at the same time that the debate was on, right? Oh, no, that's right. So they're making fun about people switching back and forth, you know, and they were playing, like, a little bit of the debate, and a little bit of the announce of the baseball game, and showing it up to give you what the impression was of people last night. Just like the famous Bambi game of football. Huh? What is that? You ever heard of that one? No. The Bambi game? They had a very big, important football game on, and it went overtime. At 8 o'clock, Bambi was supposed to come on television, so the network switched to Bambi, and NBC's switchboard looked like a Christmas tree. You had so many people calling and cursing them out. Oh. Because of, you know, they cut the football game off for Bambi. Oh, I can't remember that. So they keep up with all these movies like Bambi meets Godzilla. I watched that game time. I'm a football fan. He says, The friendship, then, of the good is the greatest, as has been said many times. Page 7 here. For the good or pleasant simply seems to be loved and chosen, but by each what is such to him. But the good by the good through both of these, right? And we've talked about that before, right? If you and I are alike in enjoying bad things, right? We have some reason to enjoy each other's company, right? Because we enjoy the same things, right? But the things that we're enjoying together are not really very enjoyable. Well, if you and I rejoice in good things, right? Then we have a double reason for liking each other, right? Because the things that we rejoice in are really good for us, right? And we enjoy them, right? So we have a double reason. Huh? Okay. Now, what's the next part here of the text here? We're going to point out something kind of subtle, huh? This connection between friendship and habit. And loving there is probably like in Greek there, more the physical loving, eros. It seems to be like a passion, an emotionally feeling, right? But friendship is like a what? A habit, right? For loving, or wanting, is just as much towards inanimate things, but in friendship they love in return with choice. Choice, however, is from habit. That's kind of interesting, right? And again, go back to Shakespeare there, right? And that passage we gave you there in the Friendly Topics, where Hamlet says, Since my dearest soul was mistress of her choice, and could have been distinguished, right? Her election, which is another word for choice, right? Has sealed thee for herself, right? But he's a friend of Horatio by what? Feeling? By emotion? By passion? No. He's a friend by choice, right? Okay? Now, is there a connection between choice and habit? Can there be love at first sight? This passionate love at first sight? At least the great poets represent the great lovers in this sense, right? As having love, as having love, this passion, this feeling, this emotion, at first sight, right? Okay? President Bush said last night in the debate, he asked him about his woman folk, right? And so he said that it was love at first sight, with his wife, huh? Okay? But can there be friendship at first sight? There can be a desire for friendship, right? Okay? But I can't really choose you as my friend without, what? Yeah. But again, on my side, huh? The choices you make in life, do they proceed more from your habit than anything else? See, Aristotle defines moral virtue in the second book, huh? He puts choice in the definition of moral virtue, huh? And sometimes they translate the definition like this. They'll say, moral virtue is a habit with choice, right? Existing in the middle, towards us, as determined by right reason, huh? And maybe you could, you know, almost define it as a habit of choosing, right? What is in the middle, in the middle towards us, as determined by right reason. So if I'm a temperate man, if I'm a moderate man, right, then I'm habitually inclined, right, to choose to eat and to drink, neither too much nor too little for me, as right reason sees the amount I should have at this particular time, right? Okay? Because sometimes you need more or less because of the circumstances, right? It's going to be a long time before we eat now, so get a good breakfast dinner or something, right, huh? Okay? So there's a connection there between choice and what? Habit, right? So it's interesting that Aristotle, it's a little bit brief here what he says, right? Maybe he needs some more unfolding than I'm... giving it here, but he's seeing a connection between friendship and choice, and between choice and what? Habit, right? And I suppose those that you choose as your friends, right? Or those you choose to be close to, right? And those you may just happen to be, you know, brought in a close association. But those you choose to be friends with, or to be close to, says something about your habits, right? You see? If I'm not habituated to listening to rock and roll, which I'm not, I'm not going to be choosing as a close friend someone whose meat is that kind of music, right? You see? Okay? But now if someone comes along and they're very much into Mozart, well, I'd be more inclined to choose to associate with this sort of person, huh? Okay? Because I'm in the habit of listening to Mozart more than any other composer, right? More than block or handle or anybody else. Or I'm a man who's habituated to philosophizing and theological thinking and so on, right? So I began to have a conversation with somebody and he seems to be interested in these things, right? Yeah? Okay? Then I'm more disposed to choose this person as a, what? Friend, huh? Okay? So is there truth in what Aristotle is saying here, right? Okay? This is an interesting connection between habit and friendship, right? Not just that friendship itself can be said to be a habit, right? But that our friendships come not so much from feeling or emotion, like romantic love can be, you know, at once like that because it's a feeling, right? But it comes from choice and the choice comes from what our habits are. Okay? But again, you know, Shakespeare kind of helps us to see that in those passages, right? Something in the character of Hamlet is revealed to us by the fact that he chose Horatio as his friend, right? Give me that man that is not passion slated, right? And I will wear him in my hearty and my heart of hearts, right? Or if I had to get drunk every weekend or something, I'm looking for someone else who wants to get drunk every weekend too, right? You see what I mean? Now, in the next to the last paragraph in this fifth reading, again, a very subtle thing Aristotle is saying. That in his highest kind of friendship, especially, they wish good things to the beloved for their sake, huh? Not by passion, but by what? Habit, huh? Now, what does that mean, you see? Well, what does the emotions... What are the emotions? We talked a little bit about this before, right? What are the emotions or feelings, huh? As opposed to choice, huh? But choice is found really only in men among the animals, right? Because choice requires some kind of reason, right? There's a reason why Hamlet chose Horatio rather than other men, right? He saw that other men were the slaves of some passion, right? And that Horatio was not a slave of some passion. So you have a reason for choosing a ratio rather than this other man, right? Or this man loves Mozart, and this man doesn't rock and roll. It's kind of a reason for choosing this man as a friend rather than that man, right? You see? So, there's a connection here, right? Choice is an act of the will, right? But the will is the desire following upon reason. So, the emotions or the feelings are something we have in common with the other animals, right? And this follows upon sense, right? Okay? Now, how do sense know the good? How do the senses know what is good and bad? Well, they're very limited in knowing the good and the bad, right? The senses by themselves, they know good only by what is pleasing to the senses, right? And they know bad only in the way of what is displeasing or painful to the senses, huh? And whose good is the pleasure of the senses? It's the good of the one who has the senses, right? Okay? So, by the emotions or the feelings, am I really, what? Wishing well to another person, see? If my notion of good is what is pleasing to my senses, I'm seeking in some sense my own, right? Okay? But friendship requires, right? That you love another person, right? For their own sake, right? So, you can say a child is almost naturally, what? Selfish, we'd say, right? When you follow just your senses, you're just trying to please yourself, right? So you're not really concerned with the good of another, right? You're seeking the other because they please you, what they do for you. And it's hard for us to get over that original condition. And that's why Aristotle's saying that you have to be habituated to this, huh? Now, he's saying, huh? For loving, excuse me, next to the last. And they wish good things of love for their sake, not by passion, but by habit. Well, if you have experience as a parent, or your own parents brought you up right, the parents' part of the education, the moral education of the child, is to get the child to not be selfish, but to think of what? Right. Yeah, see? And I always take a simple example, you know, where the kid has some candy, right? And you say, can I have some? You know? And maybe his first thing is, doesn't want to share his candy, right? Please. Please, you know? And so on. And then the kid, you know, gives you some, right, huh? Okay. Maybe you have some candy and you share it with him, right? Give him this good example, right? And so he kind of builds up a habit of what? Yeah, or sharing with another, right, huh? Now, he doesn't consider, maybe get a box of candy from Aunt so-and-so for his birthday, right? Or take it to his room and make it all by himself. No. See? But he's being habituated, right? And these habits are by repeated acts, right? He's become accustomed to sharing the good things that he has, right? Okay. Well, then he's, what, being habituated to wish well to others and not just to himself, right? And that's necessary in order to be a true friend, huh? That you wish well to another, not because of what you get from them, right, but for their own sake, right? But how can this little boy or girl get from the selfishness they were kind of subject to because of the fact that we follow our senses as a child? Well, how can they get out of that selfishness to the point of actually wishing well to others? Well, they have to be accustomed to think of others, huh? Well, when I was down the, when I was a little boy there, we used to, you know, get together a bunch of kids in the neighborhood and play a game of softball or something, right? Okay, now.