Book 8
3
These considerationsThat is, greater certainty of parentage, closer affinity and earlier commencement of affection. also explain why parental affection is stronger in the mother. Parents then love their children as themselves (one’s offspring being as it were another self—other because separateOr a second self produced by separation from oneself.); children love their parents as the source of their being; brothers love each other as being from the same source, since the identity of their relations to that source identifies them with one another, which is why we speak of being of the same blood or of the same stock or the like; brothers are therefore in a manner the same being, though embodied in separate persons.
