4524. CONCERNING FRIENDSHIP AND THE LOVE OF FRIENDSHIP. I heard good spirits conversing among themselves respecting friendship and the love of friendship, [and maintaining] that there could be friendship indeed, but never any love of friendship, inasmuch as the love of friendship ties minds [animos] together, notwithstanding the minds [mentes] are dissimilar, which causes much trouble in the other life. [It was said], moreover, that the love of friendship regards nothing but the delights of life, which draw away [the thoughts] from the delights and blessednesses of the other life, and is such that when riches and their consequent delights cease, it is then dissolved and becomes none, and is followed by contempt, whatever the love may have been previously; whereas if there was anything good and right in a particular friend, or rather an associate or companion, that that was to be loved, and to be loved the same whether the other party were a companion or not, thus for the sake of the good itself, though he should know its genuine quality and not suffer himself to be blinded by it. Friendship [it was said] is of civil life, but not the love of friendship.