““Goodness in other people naturally arouses our affection and friendship, not because it’s of some material advantage to us, but because it’s the mirror image of our own potential for virtue, and so loved for its own sake. For instance, the Roman statesman Laelius the Wise, renowned for his own exemplary friendship with Scipio Africanus the Younger, had studied Stoic philosophy under the scholarchs Diogenes of Babylon and Panaetius. In a dialogue entitled On Friendship, Cicero portrays him saying that ‘nothing else in the whole world is so completely in harmony with Nature’ as true friendship, a profound agreement in the feelings and values of two people, supported by mutual goodwill and affection.””
