[58]
Now, if a contrast and comparison were to be
made to find out where most of our moral obligation
is due, country would come first, and parents; for
their services have laid us under the heaviest obligation; next come children and the whole family, who
look to us alone for support and can have no other
protection; finally, our kinsmen, with whom we live
on good terms and with whom, for the most part,
our lot is one.
All needful material assistance is, therefore, due
first of all to those whom I have named; but intimate relationship of life and living, counsel, conversation, encouragement, comfort, and sometimes even
reproof flourish best in friendships. And that friendship is sweetest which is cemented by congeniality
of character.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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