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The Friendship based on motives of profit is thought to be most

of all formed out of contrary elements: the poor man, for

instance, is thus a friend of the rich, and the ignorant of the

man of information; that is to say, a man desiring that of which

he is, as it happens, in want, gives something else in exchange

for it. To this same class we may refer the lover and beloved,

the beautiful and the ill-favoured. For this reason lovers

sometimes show in a ridiculous light by claiming to be the

objects of as intense a feeling as they themselves entertain: of

course if they are equally fit objects of Friendship they are

perhaps entitled to claim this, but if they have nothing of the

kind it is ridiculous.

Perhaps, moreover, the contrary does not aim at its contrary for

its own sake but incidentally: the mean is really what is grasped

at; it being good for the dry, for instance, not to become wet

but to attain the mean, and so of the hot, etc.