NOTE: 70

CHAPTER XXI: Rule[s] of Conduct with a Friend.

1. It is necessary that we choose prudent persons as friends for ourselves, and not indiscreetly form familiarities and friendships with any sort of man without distinction. And since a friend is accounted as one soul with us dwelling in two bodies, therefore in difficult circumstances we find it necessary to reveal our secret counsels to one another and to receive profitable advice. Wherefore, if the friend we have acquired be imprudent and ignorant, he will—not out of malice, but through inexperience—make our secrets known to others; for schemers so steal the secret within the heart from the mouth of inexperienced and unskilled men that they [themselves] perceive it not, and from this many kinds of harms may arise; moreover, the advice [they] give may also often be useless or pernicious. Therefore, one ought to choose a prudent and experienced man as a friend, that [he may give] profitable advice...