Plutarch De fraterno amore 2

[2] And yet the illustration of such common use by brothers Nature has placed at no great distance from us; on the contrary, in the body itself she has contrived to make most of the necessary parts double and brothers and twins ¹ : hands, feet, eyes, ears, nostrils; and she has thus taught us that she has divided them in this fashion for mutual preservation and assistance, not for variance and strife. And when she separated the very hands into a number of unequal fingers, she supplied men with the most accurate and skilful of instruments, so that Anaxagoras ² of old assigned the reason for man’s wisdom and intelligence to his having hands. The contrary of this, however, seems to be true ³ : it is not because man acquired hands that he is wisest of animals; it is because by nature he was endowed with reason and skill that he acquired instruments of a nature adapted to these powers. And this fact is obvious to everyone: Nature from one seed and one source has created two brothers, or three, or more, not for difference and opposition to each other, but that by being separate they might the more readily co-operate with one another. For indeed creatures that had three bodies and an hundred hands, if any such were ever really born, being joined together in all their members, could do nothing independently and apart from one another, as may brothers, who can either remain at home or reside abroad, as well as undertake public office and husbandry through each other’s help if they but preserve that principle of goodwill and concord which Nature has given them. But if they do not, they will differ not at all, I think, from feet which trip up one another and fingers which are unnaturally entwined and twisted by each other. ⁴ But rather, just as in the same body the combination of moist and dry, cold and hot, sharing one nature and diet, by their consent and agreement engender the best and most pleasant temperament and bodily harmony-without which, they say, there is not any joy or profit either in wealth or but if overreaching and factious strife be engendered in them, they corrupt and destroy the animal most shamefully; so through the concord of brothers both family and household are sound and flourish, and friends and intimates, like an harmonious choir, neither do nor say, nor think, anything discordant; a slandering servant, or a flatterer who slips in from outside, or a malignant citizen. For as diseases in bodies which cannot accept their proper diet engender cravings for many strange and harmful foods, so slander and suspicion entertained against kinsmen ushers in evil and pernicious associations which flow in from outside to fill the vacant room. ⁷