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On these and similar topics Theophrastus wrote very discreetly, scrupulously and conscientiously, yet with more attention to analysis and discussion than with the intention or hope of arriving at a decision, since undoubtedly the variations in circumstances and exigencies, and the minute distinctions and differences, do not admit of a definite and universal rule that can be applied to individual cases; and it is such a rule, as I said at the beginning of this essay, of which we are in search.
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Now this Chilo, with whom I began this little discussion, is the author not only of some other wise and salutary precepts, but also of the following, which has been found particularly helpful, since it confines within due limits those two most ungovernable passions, love and hatred. So love, said he, as if you were possibly destined to hate; and in the same way, hate as if you might perhaps afterwards love. Cicero, De Amicitia, 59, attributes this saying to Bias, another of the seven sages, as do also Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius and Valerius Maximus. It has appeared in various forms in later times.
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Of this same Chilo the philosopher Plutarch, in the first book of his treatise On the Soul, wrote as follows: vii, p. 19, Bern. Chilo of old, having heard a man say that he had no enemy, asked him if he had no friend, believing that enmities necessarily followed and were involved in friendships.
