Offer not your hand to anyone with whom you may casually associate. This is in fact only an extension of the sense of the first apothegm, by which we were admonished not lightly, or unadvisedly, to admit anyone to an intimacy, «for with your hand you should give your heart». «Deligas enim tantum quem diligas», you should chuse as friends only such persons as are worthy of your love, and when you have found such, as Polonius advises his son Laertes, «Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel», for «amicus est magis necessarius quam ignis et aqua», a friend is more necessary to us than fire and water, without which, we know, we cannot even exist. From a want of making this selection, and of being well acquainted with the characters of the persons whom we admit to this intimacy, arises the frequent complaint of the perfidy of friends. «Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse», he who is a friend to himself is a friend to everyone to whom he professes to be so. If this apothegm of Seneca should not be admitted to its full extent, it will at the least be allowed, that he who is not a friend to himself, should not be expected to be a friend to anyone besides. For how should a man be a friend to strangers, who neglects what is necessary for the comfortable subsistence of himself and family? In short, to be a friend it is necessary that a man should shew himself to be a reasonable and a good moral man, fulfilling his duty to God, to his country, and to himself. Such a man, to adopt the language of Montaigne, «is truly of the cabinet council of the Muses, and has attained to the height of human wisdom».If these rules in the choice of our friends be followed, few persons will have reason to complain of their faithlessness. If it should be said that such characters are rare, it then follows, that there are but few persons with whom we should enter into that close intimacy which is designated by the term friendship.
Fuente: Erasmo, 2 (4)., Seneca, Epistulae morales, 1.6.
