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Title: The gift of friendship

Compiler: Alfred H. Hyatt

Contributor: Joseph Addison

Anthusa
Aristotle
Francis Bacon
George Berkeley
Thomas Carlyle
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Oliver Goldsmith
Samuel Johnson
Henry Mackenzie
Michel de Montaigne
Sir Richard Steele
Henry David Thoreau

Illustrator: H. C. Preston MacGoun

Release date: September 2, 2018 [eBook #57837]

Most recently updated: January 24, 2021

Language: English
Credits: Produced by Turgut Dincer, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from images made available by the
HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIFT OF

FRIENDSHIP ***
THE GIFT OF FRIENDSHIP

THE FOULIS BOOKS

 Printed October 1910

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

 CONTENTS
I R. W. EMERSON
PAGE
Friendship 1
II H. D. THOREAU
Friends and Friendship 45
III THOMAS CARLYLE
The Sentiment of Friendship 79
IV HENRY MACKENZIE
On the Acquisition of Friends 89
V OLIVER GOLDSMITH
On Friendship 99
VI DR. JOHNSON
The Pleasures of Friendship 109
VII DR. JOHNSON
The True Art of Friendship 119
VIII GEORGE BERKELEY
The Virtue of Friendship 137
IX SIR RICHARD STEELE
On the Choice of Friends 151
X JOSEPH ADDISON
The Qualifications of Friendship 161
XI FRANCIS BACON
Of Friendship 173
XII MONTAIGNE
Of Friendship 193
XIII ANTHUSA TO ST. JOHN
Ideal Friendship 231
XIV ARISTOTLE
The Blessings of Friendship 247
 ILLUSTRATIONS
From Water-Colour Drawings by
H. C. PRESTON MACGOUN, R.S.W.
‘We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God’ Frontispiece
Facing page
‘My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave
them to me’ 56
‘It is a spiritual gift, worthy of him to give and of me to
receive’ 136
‘Then shall we meet ... as water with water’ 216

SELECTED AND
EDITED BY
ALFRED H. HYATT

TO MY FRIEND

FRED. G. BOWLES
 I

FRIENDSHIP
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
 FRIENDSHIP
E have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.
W Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the An
world, the whole human family is bathed with an element element
of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in
of love

houses whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honour, and who honour
us; how many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom, though
silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering
eye-beams. The heart knoweth.
The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial
exhilaration. In poetry, and in common
speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency which are
felt towards others are likened to the material effects of fire; so Affection
swift or much more swift, more active more cheering are these fine the sweetness
inward irradiations. From the highest degree of passionate love, to of life
the lowest degree of goodwill, they make the sweetness of life.
Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The scholar
sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one
good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to write a letter to a
friend—and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves on every
hand with chosen words. See, in any house where virtue and self-respect
abide, the palpitation which the approach of a stranger causes. A commended
stranger is expected
and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain
invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear A
to the good hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, stranger’s
arrival
all things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the
new, and they must get up a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger,
only the good report is told by others, only the good and new is heard by us.
He stands to us for humanity. He is what we wish. Having imagined and
invested him, we ask how we should stand related in conversation and action
with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts conversation
with him. We talk better than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a
richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. For long
hours we
can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communications,
drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that they who sit by, Rich
of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at communications
our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his
partialities, his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. He
has heard the first, the last, and best he will ever hear from us. He is no
stranger now. Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension are old acquaintances.
Now, when he comes, he may get the order, the dress, and the dinner—but
the throbbing of the heart, and the communications of the soul, no more.
What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a young world
for me again? What so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a
thought,
in a feeling? How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart,
the steps and forms of the gifted and the true! The moment we A
indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is no thanksgiving for
winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish—all duties friends
even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant
of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it
should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a
thousand years.
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and
the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to
me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so
ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and
the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who
hears me, who understands me, becomes mine—a possession for Friends
all time. Nor is nature so poor but she gives me this joy several come unsought
times, and thus we weave social threads of our own, a new web of
relations; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we
shall by and by stand in a new world of our own creation, and no longer
strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have come to me
unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine
affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me
and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character,
relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now
makes many one. High
thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me
to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my The
thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard—poetry without nobility of
stop—hymn, ode, and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the friendship
Muses chanting still. Will these, too, separate themselves from me
again, or some of them? I know not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them
is so pure that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of my life being
thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble
as these men and women, wherever I may be.
I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is almost
dangerous to me to ‘crush the sweet poison of misused wine’ of the
affections. A new person is to me a great event, and hinders
me from sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which
have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields A great
no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my action is very little modified. event
I must feel pride in my friend’s accomplishments as if they were mine—and a
property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised as the lover when
he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of
our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his
temptations less. Everything that is his—his name, his form, his dress, books,
and instruments—fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger
from his mouth.
Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in
the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the
soul, is too good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, The
half knows that she is not verily that which he worships; and in the golden
hour of
golden hour of friendship we are surprised with shades of suspicion friendship
and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in
which he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have ascribed
this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect men as it
respects itself. In strict science all persons underlie the same condition of an
infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the
metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the
things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are. Their
essence
is not less beautiful than their appearance, though it needs finer
organs for its apprehension. The root of the plant is not unsightly to A
science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the stem short. magnificent
conception
And I must hazard the production of the bald fact amidst these
pleasing reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A
man who stands united with his thought conceives magnificently of himself.
He is conscious of a universal success, even though bought by uniform
particular failures. No advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any
match for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than on
your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the
star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear
what you say of the admirable parts and tried temper of the party
you praise, but I see well that for all his purple cloaks I shall not The
like him, unless he is at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, shadow
of the
O friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also Phenomenal
in its pied and painted immensity,—thee, also, compared with
whom all else is shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,—thou
art not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately,
and already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. It is not that the soul puts forth
friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination of new
buds, extrudes the old leaf? The law of nature is alternation forevermore.
Each electrical state super-induces the opposite. The soul environs
itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-
acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may The
exalt its conversation or society. This method betrays itself along searchafter
the whole history of our personal relations. The instinct of affection friendship
revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense
of insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his life in the
search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he might
write a letter like this to each new candidate for his love.
DEAR FRIEND,—If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to
match my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles in relation to
thy comings and goings. I am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable;
and I respect thy
genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in thee
a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious A letter
torment. Thine ever, or never. to a
friend
Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and
not for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb, and not
cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have
made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the
human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with
the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty
benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the
whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.
We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate
passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are
armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, Friendship’s
begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all laws
people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is
worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful
natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual
disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After
interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented
presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies
of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our
faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude.
I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how
many friends I have, and what content I can find in conversing with Society
each, if there be one to whom I am not equal. If I have shrunk aperpetual
unequal from one contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes disappointment
mean and cowardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my other
friends my asylum.
‘The valiant warrior famoused for fight,
After a hundred victories, once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.’

Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and apathy are a

tough husk, in which a delicate organisation is protected from premature
ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were
yet ripe enough to know and own it.
 Respect the Naturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a
million years, and works in duration, in which Alps and Andes The good
come and go as rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no heaven spirit of
which is the price of rashness. Love, which is the essence of God, our life
is not for levity, but for the total worth of man. Let us not have this
childish luxury in our regards, but the austerest worth; let us approach our
friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth,
impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.
The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, and I leave, for the
time, all account of subordinate social benefit, to speak of that select and
sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and which even leaves the
language of love suspicious
and common, so much is this purer, and nothing is so much divine.
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest Friendship
not to
courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or be
frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many treated
ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? daintily
Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny.
In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet
sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother’s
soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and
shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a
festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the
solemnity of that relation, and honour its law! He who offers
himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian A
to the great games where the first-born of the world are the friend’s house
competitors. He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want,
Danger are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his
constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of
all these. The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the speed in
that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. There
are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign
that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first
named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.
Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the
presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those The
elements
undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second of
friendship
thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the
simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.
Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the
highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth as having none above it to
court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a
second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our
fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover
up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a
certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and,
omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the
conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great Every
insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he man alone is
was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for sincere
some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing
every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would
think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of
markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much
sincerity to the like plain-dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what
symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society
shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations
with men in a false age
is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost
every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be We can
humoured; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion seldom go erect
or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which
spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not
my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring
any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature.
I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm
with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in
all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a
friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to
men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by A
lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and friend the
badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much character masterpiece
can subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another be so of
nature
blessed, and we so pure, that we can offer him tenderness? When a
man becomes dear to me, I have touched the goal of fortune. I find very little
written directly to the heart of this matter in books. And yet I have one text
which I cannot choose but remember. My author says—‘I offer myself faintly
and bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and tender myself least to him to
whom I am the most devoted.’ I wish that friendship should have feet, as well
as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground before it
vaults over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen before it is The
quite a cherub. We chide the citizen because he makes love a goal of
fortune
commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good
neighbourhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall at the funeral; and
quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the relation. But though we
cannot find the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we
cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and does not
substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality,
fidelity, and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify
modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of plough-boys
and tin-pedlars to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates
its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, The
and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friendship is a name of
friendship
commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more
strict than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through
all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days, and
graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare,
shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of the
wit and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs
and offices of man’s life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom, and unity. It
should never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert and
inventive, and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery.
Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, The of
end

each so well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal so friendship

circumstanced (for even in that particular, a poet says, love
demands that the parties be altogether paired), that its satisfaction can very
seldom be assured. It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of those who
are learned in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more than two. I am not
quite so strict in my terms, perhaps because I have never known so high a
fellowship as others. I please my imagination more with a circle of godlike
men and women variously related to each other, and between whom subsists
a lofty intelligence. But I find this law of one to one peremptory for
conversation, which is the practice and consummation of
friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as Friendship
good and bad. You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at consummated
several times with two several men, but let all three of you come together,
and you shall not have one new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may
hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and
searching sort. In good company there is never such discourse between two,
across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good company,
the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly coextensive
with the several consciousnesses there present. No partialities of friend to
friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there
pertinent,
but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail on the
common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. The law
one
Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high of to one
freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running
of two souls into one.
No two men but, being left alone with each other, enter into simpler
relations. Yet it is affinity that determines which two shall converse.
Unrelated men give little joy to each other; will never suspect the latent
powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it
were a permanent property in some individuals. Conversation is an
evanescent relation, no more. A man is reputed to have thought and
eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to
his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much
reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the Of
shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his conversation
thought, he will regain his tongue.
Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that
piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let
me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should
overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by
antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself.
The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate,
where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find
a mush of concession.
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The
condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. Friendship’s
That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be requirements
very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large,
formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they
recognise the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.
He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure that
greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to intermeddle
with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave to the diamond its
ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eternal. Friendship
demands a religious treatment. We talk of choosing
our friends, but friends are self-elected, Reverence is a great part of
it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits that are Friendship’s
not yours, and that you cannot honour, if you must needs hold him demand
close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them mount and
expand. Are you the friend of your friend’s buttons, or of his thought? To a
great heart he will be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come
near in the holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as
property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the
noblest benefit.
Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should we
desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash
personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know
his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your Friends
own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this are self-
elected
touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a
thought, a sincerity a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I
can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper
companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure,
universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in
comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump
of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that
standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action,
do not
pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. Worship
his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell A
them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for ever friend’s
society
a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a
trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the opal,
the light of the diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. To my
friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a
little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give, and of me to
receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it
will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than
all the annals of heroism have yet made good.
Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to
prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We A
must be our own before we can be another’s. There is at least this beautiful
enemy
satisfaction in the crime, according to the Latin proverb—you can
speak to your accomplice on even terms. Crimen quos inquinat, æquat. To
those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of
self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. There can never
be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their
dialogue, each stands for the whole world.
What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we
can. Let us be silent—so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not
interfere.
Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select
souls, or how to say anything to such? No matter how ingenious, We
no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees must our
be

of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. own
Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and
everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips.
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his soul
only flees the faster from you, and you shall never catch a true glance of his
eye. We see the noble afar off, and they repel us; why should we intrude?
Late—very late—we perceive that no arrangements, no introductions, no
consuetudes or habits of society,
would be of any avail to establish us in such relations with them as
we desire—but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree Select
it is in them; then shall we meet as water with water; and if we souls
should not meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already they.
In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man’s own worthiness
from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as
if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.
The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to
establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends, such
as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the
faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the
universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which
can love us, and which we can love. We may congratulate The last
ourselves that the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders, and of analysis
shame is passed in solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp
heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already see,
not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship
can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no
God attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little you gain
the great. You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of
false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world—those rare
pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom
the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely.
It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so
we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our Desired
popular views we make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us friendsare
out in, and though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us with dreams
a greater. Let us feel, if we will, the absolute insulation of man. We and
fables
are sure that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue
persons, or we read books, in the instinctive faith that these will call it out
and reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as we; the
Europe an old faded garment of dead persons; the books their ghosts. Let us
drop this idolatry. Let us give over this mendicancy. Let us even bid our
dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying,
‘Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more.’ Ah! seest thou
not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher A
platform, and only be more each other’s, because we are more our friend
own? A friend is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the future. isJanus-
He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to faced
come, and the harbinger of a greater friend.
I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where
I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on our own
terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to speak
much with my friend. If he is great, he makes me so great that I cannot
descend to converse. In the great days, presentiments hover before me in the
firmament. I ought
then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may seize them, I go
out that I may seize them. I fear only that I may lose them receding Spiritual
into the sky in which now they are only a patch of brighter light. astronomy
Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study
their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a certain household
joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and
come down to warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn
always the vanquishing of my mighty gods. It is true, next week I shall have
languid moods, when I can well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects;
then I shall regret the lost literature of your mind, and wish you were by my
side again. But if you come, perhaps you will
fill my mind only with new visions, not with yourself but with your
lustres, and I shall not be able any more than now to converse with New
you. So I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will visions
receive from them, not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me
that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But
they shall not hold me by any relations less subtle and pure. We will meet as
though we met not, and part as though we parted not.
It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship
greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I
cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never
troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space,
and
only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness
educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will The
essence
presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, of
friendship
no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the
gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the
great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the
unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor
interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and
feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without
a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a
total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It
treats its object as a god, that it may deify both.
 II

FRIENDS AND FRIENDSHIP

HENRY D. THOREAU
 FRIENDS & FRIENDSHIP
O word is oftener on the lips of men than Friendship, and
N indeed no thought is more familiar to their aspirations. All The
men are dreaming of it, and its drama, which is always a familiar
tragedy, is enacted daily. It is the secret of the universe. You
word

may thread the town, you may wander the country, and none shall ever speak
of it, yet thought is everywhere busy about it, and the idea of what is possible
in this respect affects our behaviour toward all new men and women and a
great many old ones. Nevertheless, I can remember only two or three essays
on this subject in all literature. No wonder that the Mythology, and Arabian
Nights, and Shakespeare, and Scott’s novels entertain us: we are
poets and fablers and dramatists and novelists ourselves. We are The
continually acting a part in a more interesting drama than any most interesting
written. We are dreaming that our Friends are our Friends, and that drama
we are our Friends’ Friends. Our actual Friends are but distant
relations of those to whom we are pledged. We never exchange more than
three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and
feelings almost habitually rise.
One goes forth prepared to say, ‘Sweet Friends!’ and the salutation is,
‘Damn your eyes!’ But never mind; faint heart never won true Friend.
Oh, my Friend, may it come to pass once, that when you are my Friend I
may be yours.
Of what use the friendliest dispositions even, if there are no
hours given to Friendship, if it is for ever postponed to unimportant The
duties and relations? Friendship is first, Friendship last. But it is name of
friendship
equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer
to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we begin to keep them
company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual
Friends that we may go and meet their ideal cousins! I would that I were
worthy to be any man’s Friend.
What is commonly honoured with the name of Friendship is no very
profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their friends greatly.
I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by
their Friendship for one another. They are not often
transfigured and translated by love in each other’s presence.
I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love Friendship
wrong
of a man. If one abates a little the price of his wood, or gives a ascribed
neighbour his vote at town-meeting, or a barrel of apples, or lends
him his wagon frequently, it is esteemed a rare instance of Friendship. Nor do
the farmers’ wives lead lives consecrated to Friendship. I do not see the pair
of farmer Friends of either sex prepared to stand against the world. There are
only two or three couples in history.
To say that a man is your Friend means commonly no more than this, that
he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental
and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of
need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel; but he who
foresees such advantages in this relation proves himself blind to its Friends
real advantage, or indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation to be
spiritual
itself. Such services are particular and menial compared with the ministers
perpetual and all-embracing service which it is. Even the utmost
goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for
Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in
melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies—
neighbours are kind enough for that—but to do the like office to our spirits.
For this, few are rich enough, however well disposed they may be. For the
most part we stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish
only races or nations, or at
most classes, but the wise man, individuals. To his Friend a man’s
peculiar character appears in every feature and in every action, and The
importance
it is thus drawn out and improved by him. of
Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men. friendship

‘He that hath love and judgment too,

Sees more than any other doe.’

It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him a
saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the magnanimous with the
magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man with man.
And it is well said by another poet—
 ‘Why love among the virtues is not known,
Is that love is them all contract in one.’

All the abuses which are the object of reform with the philanthropist, the
statesman,
and the housekeeper are unconsciously amended in the intercourse
of Friends. A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the The
compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can intercourseof
appreciate them in us. It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak friends
and another to hear. How can one treat with magnanimity mere
wood and stone? If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at
last forget how to speak truth. Only lovers know the value and magnanimity
of truth, while traders prize a cheap honesty, and neighbours and
acquaintance a cheap civility. In our daily intercourse with men our nobler
faculties are dormant and suffered to rust.
None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we
have gold to give, they demand only copper.
We ask our neighbour to suffer himself to be dealt with truly,
sincerely, nobly; but he answers no by his deafness. He does not A
even hear this prayer. He says practically, I will be content if you neighbour’s
reply
treat me as ‘no better than I should be,’ as deceitful, mean,
dishonest, and selfish. For the most part, we are contented so to deal and to
be dealt with, and we do not think that for the mass of men there is any truer
and nobler relation possible. A man may have good neighbours, so called,
and acquaintances, and even companions, wife, parents, brothers, sisters,
children, who meet himself and one another on this ground only. The State
does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well
with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice; and so do the
neighbourhood and the
family. What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little
more honour among rogues. Our
lives
But sometimes we are said to love another—that is, to stand in a are
true relation to him, so that we give the best to, and receive the best divine
from, him. Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love; and and miraculous
in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our
lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. There are passages
of affection in our intercourse with mortal men and women such as no
prophecy had taught us to expect, which transcend our earthly life and
anticipate Heaven for us. What is this Love that may come right into the
middle of a prosaic Goffstown day, equal to any of the gods; that discovers a
new world, fair and fresh and
eternal, occupying the place of the old one, when to the common
eye a dust has settled on the universe? which world cannot else be Heaven
reached, and does not exist. What other words, we may almost ask, anticipated
are memorable and worthy to be repeated than those which love has inspired?
It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. They are few and rare indeed; but,
like a strain of music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated by the
memory. All other words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the
heart. We should not dare to repeat these now aloud. We are not competent to
hear them at all times.
The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of
Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They
mean associates
and confidants merely. ‘Know that the contrariety of foe and
Friend proceeds from God.’ Friendship takes place between those Affinity
who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and of friends
inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail. Even
speech, at first, necessarily has nothing to do with it; but it follows after
silence, as the buds in the graft do not put forth into leaves till long after the
graft has taken. It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act. We are
all Mussulmen and fatalists in this respect.
Impatient and uncertain lovers think that they must say or do something
kind whenever they meet; they must never be cold. But they who are Friends
do not know what they think they must, but what they must. Even their
Friendship is to some extent but a sublime phenomenon to them.
 The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in A
some such terms as these:— sublime
phenomenon
‘I never asked thy leave to let me love thee—I have a right. I
love thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as
something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. Oh, how I think
of you! You are purely good—you are infinitely good. I can trust you for
ever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to
live.’
‘You are the fact in a fiction—you are the truth more strange and
admirable than fiction. Consent only to be what you are. I alone will never
stand in your way.’
‘This is what I would like—to be as intimate with you as our
spirits are intimate—respecting you as I respect my ideal. Never to The
profane one another by word or action, even by a thought. Between fact in a
fiction
us, if necessary, let there be no acquaintance.’
‘I have discovered you; how can you be concealed from me?’
The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and
wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes.
They are kind to each other’s dreams.
Though the poet says, ‘’Tis the pre-eminence of Friendship to impute
excellence,’ yet we can never praise our Friend, nor esteem him
praiseworthy, nor let him think that he can please us by any behaviour, or
ever treat us well enough.
That kindness which has so good a reputation elsewhere can
least of all consist with this relation, and no such affront can be Friendship
offered to a Friend, as a conscious goodwill, a friendliness which is pre-
eminent
not a necessity of the Friend’s nature.
The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to one another by constant
constitutional differences, and are most commonly and surely the
complements of each other. How natural and easy it is for man to secure the
attention of woman to what interests himself! Men and women of equal
culture, thrown together, are sure to be of a certain value to one another, more
than men to men. There exists already a natural disinterestedness and
liberality in such society, and I think that any man will more confidently
carry his favourite books to read to
some circle of intelligent women than to one of his own sex. The
visit of man to man is wont to be an interruption, but the sexes Perfect
naturally expect one another. Yet Friendship is no respecter of sex; equality
required
and perhaps it is more rare between the sexes than between two of
the same sex.
Friendship is, at any rate, a relation of perfect equality. It cannot well
spare any outward sign of equal obligation and advantage. The nobleman can
never have a Friend among his retainers, nor the king among his subjects. Not
that the parties to it are in all respects equal, but they are equal in all that
respects or affects their Friendship. The one’s love is exactly balanced and
represented by the other’s. Persons are only the vessels which contain the
nectar, and the hydrostatic
paradox is the symbol of love’s law. It finds its level and rises to its
fountainhead in all breasts, and its slenderest column balances the Impossible
friendships
ocean.
‘And love as well the shepherd can
As can the mighty nobleman.’

The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than the other. A hero’s
love is as delicate as a maiden’s.
Confucius said, ‘Never contract Friendship with a man who is not better
than thyself.’ It is the merit and preservation of Friendship that it takes place
on a level higher than the actual characters of the parties would seem to
warrant. The rays of light come to us in such a curve that every man whom
we meet appears to be taller than he actually is. Such foundation has civility.
My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest
thought. I always assign to him a nobler employment in my
absence than I ever find him engaged in; and I imagine that the My
hours which he devotes to me were snatched from a higher society. friend
The sorest insult which I ever received from a Friend was when he behaved
with the licence which only long and cheap acquaintance allows to one’s
faults, in my presence, without shame, and still addressed me in friendly
accents. Beware, lest thy Friend learn at last to tolerate one frailty of thine,
and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love. There are times when
we have had enough even of our Friends, when we begin inevitably to
profane one another, and must withdraw religiously into solitude and silence,
the better to prepare ourselves for a loftier intimacy. Silence is the
ambrosial night in the intercourse of Friends, in which their The
sincerity is recruited and takes deeper root. language
Friendship is never established as an understood relation. Do of friendship
you demand that I be less your Friend that you may know it? Yet
what right have I to think that another cherishes so rare a sentiment for me? It
is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest
imagination and the rarest faith. It says by a silent but eloquent behaviour—‘I
will be so related to thee as thou canst imagine; even so thou mayest believe.
I will spend truth—all my wealth on thee,’—and the Friend responds silently
through his nature and life, and treats his Friend with the same divine
courtesy. He knows us literally through thick and thin. He never asks for a
sign
of love, but can distinguish it by the features which it naturally
wears. We never need to stand upon ceremony with him with Not
regard to his visits. Wait not till I invite thee, but observe that I am words
but
glad to see thee when thou comest. It would be paying too dear for meanings
thy visit to ask for it. Where my Friend lives there are all riches and
every attraction, and no slight obstacle can keep me from him. Let me never
have to tell thee what I have not to tell. Let our intercourse be wholly above
ourselves, and draw us up to it.
The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an
intelligence above language. One imagines endless conversations with his
Friend, in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts be spoken without
hesitancy or
end; but the experience is commonly far otherwise. Acquaintances
may come and go, and have a word ready for every occasion; but Acquaintances
what puny word shall he utter whose very breath is thought and and friends
meaning? Suppose you go to bid farewell to your Friend who is
setting out on a journey; what other outward sign do you know than to shake
his hand? Have you any palaver ready for him then? any box of salve to
commit to his pocket? any particular message to send by him? any statement
which you had forgotten to make?—as if you could forget anything. No; it is
much that you take his hand and say Farewell; that you could easily omit; so
far custom has prevailed. It is even painful, if he is to go, that he should
linger so long. If he must go, let him go quickly. Have you any last words?
Alas, it is only the word of words which you have so long sought and
found not; you have not a first word yet. There are few even whom The
I should venture to call earnestly by their most proper names. A word of
name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it words
belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is
entitled to my love and service. Yet reserve is the freedom and abandonment
of lovers. It is the reserve of what is hostile or indifferent in their natures to
give place to what is kindred and harmonious.
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it is
durable it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only with the
ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain be. It is one
proof of a man’s
fitness for Friendship that he is able to do without that which is
cheap and passionate. A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. Man’s
The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and fitness
for
know no other law nor kindness. It is not extravagant and insane, friendship
but what it says is something established henceforth, and will bear
to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is better and fairer news, and no time
will ever shame it, or prove it false. This is a plant which thrives best in a
temperate zone, where summer and winter alternate with one another. The
Friend is a necessarius, and meets his Friend on homely ground; not on
carpets and cushions, but on the ground and on rocks they will sit, obeying
the natural and primitive laws. They will meet without any outcry, and part
without loud
sorrow. Their relation implies such qualities as the warrior prizes;
for it takes a valour to open the hearts of men as well as the gates Friendship
of castles. It is not an idle sympathy and mutual consolation not idle
an

merely, but a heroic sympathy of aspiration and endeavour. sympathy

. . . . .
Friendship is not so kind as is imagined; it has not much human blood in
it, but consists with a certain disregard for men and their erections, the
Christian duties and humanities, while it purifies the air like electricity. There
may be the sternest tragedy in the relation of two more than usually innocent
and true to their highest instincts. We may call it an essentially heathenish
intercourse, free and irresponsible in its nature, and practising all the virtues
gratuitously. It is
not the highest sympathy merely, but a pure and lofty society, a
fragmentary and godlike intercourse of ancient date, still kept up at Godlike
intervals, which, remembering itself, does not hesitate to disregard intercourse
the humbler rights and duties of humanity. It requires immaculate
and godlike qualities full-grown, and exists at all only by condescension and
anticipation of the remotest future. We love nothing which is merely good
and not fair, if such a thing is possible. Nature puts some kind of blossom
before every fruit, not simply a calyx behind it. When the Friend comes out
of his heathenism and superstition, and breaks his idols, being converted by
the precepts of a newer testament; when he forgets his mythology, and treats
his Friend like a Christian, or as he can afford; then Friendship ceases to be
Friendship,
and becomes charity; that principle which established the
almshouse is now beginning with its charity at home, and The
cessation
establishing an almshouse and pauper relations there. of
As for the number which this society admits, it is at any rate to friendship
be begun with one, the noblest and greatest that we know, and
whether the world will ever carry it further, whether, as Chaucer affirms,
‘There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair,’

remains to be proved;
‘And certaine he is well begone
Among a thousand that findeth one.’

We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any, while we are conscious that
another is more deserving of our love. Yet Friendship does not stand for
numbers; the Friend does not count his
Friends on his fingers; they are not numerable. The more there
are included by this bond, if they are indeed included, the rarer and We
diviner the quality of the love that binds them. I am ready to cannot have
believe that as private and intimate a relation may exist by which too
three are embraced as between two. Indeed, we cannot have too many
friends
many friends; the virtue which we appreciate we to some extent
appropriate, so that thus we are made at last more fit for every relation of life.
A base Friendship is of a narrowing and exclusive tendency, but a noble one
is not exclusive; its very superfluity and dispersed love is the humanity which
sweetens society, and sympathises with foreign nations; for though its
foundations are private, it is, in effect, a public affair and a public advantage,
and the Friend more
than the father of a family deserves well of the state.
The only danger in Friendship is that it will end. It is a delicate Faults
attract
plant, though a native. The least unworthiness, even if it be faults
unknown to one’s self, vitiates it. Let the Friend know that those
faults which he observes in his Friend his own faults attract. There is no rule
more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we
suspected. By our narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have so much and
such of you, my Friend, no more. Perhaps there are none charitable, none
disinterested, none wise, noble, and heroic enough for a true and lasting
Friendship.
I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I do not appreciate their
fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do
or not. As if they expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing
which they uttered or did. Who knows but it was finely Silence
appreciated. It may be that your silence was the finest thing of the isthan better

two. There are some things which a man never speaks of which are speech
much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we
only lend a silent ear. Our finest relations are not simply kept silent about, but
buried under a positive depth of silence never to be revealed. It may be that
we are not even yet acquainted. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not
when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not
understood. Then there can never be an explanation. What avails it that
another loves you if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse. What
sort of
companions are they who are presuming always that their silence is
more expressive than yours? How foolish, and inconsiderate, and The
unjust, to conduct as if you were the only party aggrieved! Has not man with the
your Friend always equal ground of complaint? No doubt my ears
friends sometimes speak to me in vain, but they do not know what
things I hear which they are not aware that they have spoken. I know that I
have frequently disappointed them by not giving them words when they
expected them, or such as they expected. Whenever I see my Friend I speak
to him; but the expecter, the man with the ears, is not he. They will complain
too that you are hard. O ye that would have the cocoa-nut wrong side
outwards, when next I weep I will let you know. They ask for words and
deeds, when a
true relation is word and deed. If they know not of these things,
how can they be informed? We often forbear to confess our My
feelings, not from pride, but for fear that we could not continue to friend
is my
love the one who required us to give such proof of our affection. real
brother
. . . . .
My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my
flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother. I see his nature groping yonder
so like mine. We do not live far apart. Have not the fates associated us in
many ways? It says in the Vishnu Purana: ‘Seven paces together is sufficient
for the friendship of the virtuous, but thou and I have dwelt together.’ Is it of
no significance that we have so long partaken of the
same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed the same air
summer and winter, felt the same heat and cold; that the same fruits Friendship
have been pleased to refresh us both, and we have never had a consecrated
by time
thought of different fibre the one from the other!
. . . . .
As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me to the
ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as surely as
the last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall make age to be
forgotten, or, in short, the manifold influences of Nature survive during the
term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall for ever be my Friend, and
reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall foster and adorn and consecrate our
Friendship, no
less than the ruins of temples. As I love Nature, as I love singing
birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and Love
for a
evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend. friend
 III

THE SENTIMENT OF FRIENDSHIP

THOMAS CARLYLE
 THE SENTIMENT OF
FRIENDSHIP
. . . . .
ET us present the following small thread of Moral relation; A
L university
and therewith, the reader for himself weaving it in at the right friend
place, conclude our dim arras-picture of these University
years.
Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, as it is
perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality (von Adel),
from the interior parts of England. He stood connected, by blood and
hospitality, with the Counts von Zähdarm, in this quarter of Germany; to
which noble Family I likewise was, by
his means, with all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair
talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated; with considerable humour of A
character: and, bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing character
sketch
except Boxing and a little Grammar, showed less of that
aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part belongs to
Travellers of his nation. To him I owe my first practical knowledge of the
English and their ways; perhaps also something of the partiality with which I
have ever since regarded that singular people. Towgood was not without an
eye, could he have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the
Zähdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of
perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy,
hither to a University where so much as the notion of perfection,
not to say the effort after it, no longer existed! Often we would Great
condole over the hard destiny of the Young in this era: how, after and small
all our toil, we were to be turned-out into the world, with beards on cost
our chins indeed, but with few other attributes of manhood; no
existing thing that we were trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much
as Believe. ‘How has our head on the outside a polished Hat,’ would
Towgood exclaim, ‘and in the inside Vacancy, or a froth of Vocables and
Attorney-Logic! At a small cost men are educated to make leather into shoes;
but at a great cost, what am I educated to make? By Heaven, Brother! what I
have already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, would endow a considerable
Hospital of Incurables.’—‘Man, indeed,’ I would answer, ‘has a
Digestive Faculty, which must be kept working, were it even partly Looking
by stealth. But as for our Miseducation, make not bad worse; waste bravely
on life
not the time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have
yielded us no figs. Frisch zu, Bruder! Here are Books, and we have brains to
read them; here is a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to
look on them: Frisch zu!’
Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. We
looked out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once harlequins
dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not unterrific was the
aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps
my
most genial hours. Towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded
and wrongheaded Herr Towgood I was even near experiencing the Spiritual
now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that I union
was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could have loved this man, and
taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. By degrees,
however, I understood the new time, and its wants. If man’s Soul is indeed, as
in the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of Stomach, what
else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating together? Thus we,
instead of Friends, are Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away
chimeras.
. . . . .
Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain
Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the
completest Dullard of these modern times? Alas! the fearful A
Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had not fearful
unbelief
my first, last Faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed
laid open, and I dared to love, been all-too cruelly belied? The speculative
Mystery of Life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical
Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted,
foiled, and contemptuously cast-out. A feeble unit in the middle of a
threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby
to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of
Enchantment, divided me from all living: was there, in the wide world, any
true bosom I could press
trustfully to mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I kept a lock
upon my lips: why should I speak much with that shifting variety A man
of so-called Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls issufficient
Friendship was but an incredible tradition? In such cases, your for
resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the Newspapers. himself
Now when I look back, it was a strange isolation I then lived in.
The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but Figures; I
had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely
automatic. In midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked
solitary; and (except as it was my own heart, not another’s, that I kept
devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle.
. . . . .
How were Friendship possible? ‘In mutual devotedness to the
Good and True: otherwise impossible; except as Armed Neutrality, Two
or hollow Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever phantoms
praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of
being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help
man can yield to man.’ And now in conjunction therewith consider this other:
‘It is the Night of the World, and still long till it be Day: we wander amid the
glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as if
blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable Phantoms, HYPOCRISY and
ATHEISM, with the Ghoul, SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the Earth, and
call it theirs: well at ease are the sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow
Dream.’
 IV

ON THE ACQUISITION OF FRIENDS

HENRY MACKENZIE
 ON THE ACQUISITION OF
FRIENDS
HE praises of friendship, and descriptions of the happiness
T arising from it, I remember to have met with in almost every Ruined
book and poem since first I could read. I was never much by
addicted to reading: and, in this instance, I think, I have little
friends

reason to put confidence in authors. How it may be in their experience, I

know not; but in mine, this same virtue of friendship has tended very little to
my happiness; on the contrary, when I tell you my situation, you will find
that I am almost ruined by my friends.
From my earliest days I was reckoned one of the best-natured fellows in
the world; and at school, though I must
confess I did not acquire so much learning as many of my
companions, yet, even there, I was remarkable for the acquisition Friends
of friends. Even there, too, I acquired them at some expense; I was acquired
at some
flogged, I dare say, a hundred times for the faults of others, but was expense
too generous ever to peach; my companions were generous fellows
too; but it always happened, I don’t know how, that my generosity was on the
losing side of the adventure.
I had not been above three years at college, when the death of an uncle put
me in possession of a very considerable estate. As I was not violently
inclined towards literature, I soon took the opportunity, which this presented
me, of leaving the university and entering upon the world. I put myself under
the tuition
of one of my companions, who generally spent the vacations, and
indeed some of the terms too, in London; and took up my residence London
in that city. There I needed not that propensity, which I have told friends
you I always possessed, to acquire a multitude of friends. I found myself
surrounded by them in every tavern and coffee-house about town. But I soon
experienced, that though the commodity was plenty, the price was high.
Besides a considerable mortgage on my estate, of which one of my best
friends contrived to possess himself, I was obliged to expose my life to a
couple of duels, and had very near lost it.
 . . . . .
From this sort of bondage I contrived to emancipate myself by matrimony.
I married the sister of one of my friends,
a girl good-natured and thoughtless like myself, with whom I soon
retired into the country, and set out upon what we thought a sober, The
well-regulated plan. The situation was so distant as to be quite out country
life
of reach of my former town-companions; provisions were cheap
and servants faithful; in short, everything so circumstanced that we made no
doubt of living considerably within our income. Our manner of life, however,
was to be happy and prudent. By the improvement of my estate, I was to be
equally amused and enriched; my skill in sportsmanship (for I had acquired
that science to great perfection at the university) was to procure vigour to my
constitution, and dainties to my table; and, against the long nights of winter,
we were provided with an excellent neighbourhood.
This last-mentioned article is the only one which we have found
come up entirely to our expectations. My talent for friend-making A talent
has indeed extended the limits of neighbourhood a good deal for friend-
farther than the word is commonly understood to reach. The parish, making
which is not a small one—the county, which is proportionally
extensive, comes within the denomination of neighbourhood with us; and my
neighbour Goostry, who pays me an annual sporting visit of several weeks,
lives at least fifty miles off.
Some of these neighbours, who always become friends at my house, have
endeavoured to pay me for their entertainment with their advice as to the
cultivation of my farm, or the management of my estate; but I have generally
found their counsel, like other friendly exertions, put
me out of pocket in the end. Their theories of agriculture failed in
my practice of them; and the ingenious men they recommended to Our
friends’
me for tenants, seldom paid their rent by their ingenuity. attentions
The attentions of our friends are sometimes carried farther than
mere words or visits of compliment; yet, even then, unfortunately, their
favours are just so many taxes upon us. When I receive a present of a delicate
salmon, or a nice haunch of venison, it is but a signal for all my good
neighbours to come and eat at my expense; and some time ago, when a
nephew of my wife, settled abroad, sent me a hogshead of excellent claret, it
cost me, in entertainments for the honour of the liquor, what might have
purchased a tun from the wine-merchant.
After so many instances in which my
friendships were hurtful to my fortune, I wished to hit on the way
to making some of them beneficial to it. For this purpose, my wife Disappointed
and I have, for a good while past, been employed in looking out for expectations
some snug office, or reversion, to which my interest with several powerful
friends might recommend me. But, somehow or other, our expectations have
been always disappointed; not from any want of inclination in our friends to
serve us, as we have been repeatedly assured, but from various unforeseen
accidents, to which expectations of that sort are particularly liable. In the
course of these solicitations I was lead to engage in the political interests of a
gentleman on whose influence I built the strongest hopes of success in my
own schemes; and I flattered myself that, from the friendly footing
on which I stood with my neighbours, I might be of considerable
service to him. This, indeed, he is extremely ready to acknowledge, A
though he has yet found no opportunity of returning the favour; resolution
but, in the meantime, it kept my table open to all his friends, as well as my
own, and cost me, besides, a headache twice a week during the whole period
of the canvass.
In short, I find I can afford to keep myself in friends no longer. I mean to
give them warning of this my resolution as speedily as possible.... I have shut
my gates, locked my cellar, turned off my cook, disposed of my dogs, forgot
my acquaintance, and am resolved henceforward, let people say of me what
they will, to be no one’s friend but my own.
 V

ON FRIENDSHIP
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
 ON FRIENDSHIP
HERE are few subjects which have been more written upon
T and less understood than that of Friendship: to follow the The
dictates of some, this virtue, instead of being the assuager of virtue
pain, becomes the source of every inconvenience. Such friendship
of

speculatists, by expecting too much from friendship, dissolve the

connection, and by drawing the bonds too closely, at length break them.
Almost all our romance and novel writers are of this kind: they persuade
us to friendships which we find it impossible to sustain to the last; so that this
sweetener of life, under proper regulations, is by their means rendered
inaccessible or uneasy. It is certain, the best method to cultivate this virtue is
by letting it in some measure make itself; a similitude of minds or studies,
and even sometimes a diversity of pursuits, will produce all the pleasures that
arise from it. The current of tenderness widens as it proceeds; and two men
imperceptibly find their hearts warm with good-nature for each other when
they were at first in pursuit only of mirth or relaxation.
Friendship is like a debt of honour; the moment it is talked of it
loses its real name, and assumes the more ungrateful form of Friendship
obligation. From hence we find, that those who regularly undertake aofdebt
to cultivate friendship, find ingratitude generally repays their honour
endeavours. That circle of beings which dependence gathers round
us, is almost ever unfriendly; they secretly wish the term of their connection
more nearly equal; and when they even have the most virtue, are
prepared to reserve all their affections for their patron only in the Bankrupt
hour of his decline. Increasing the obligations which are laid upon hearts
such minds only increases their burden; they feel themselves unable to repay
the immensity of their debt, and their bankrupt hearts are taught a latent
resentment at the hand that is stretched out with offers of service and relief.
Plautinus was a man who thought that every good was to be bought by
riches; and as he was possessed of great wealth, and a mind naturally formed
for virtue, he resolved to gather a circle of the best men around him. Among
the number of his dependants was Musidorus, with a mind just as fond of
virtue, yet not less proud than his patron. His circumstances,
however, were such as forced him to stoop to the good offices of Plautinus
his superior, and he saw himself daily, among a number of others, and
loaded with benefits and protestations of friendship. These, in the Musidorus
usual course of the world, he thought it prudent to accept; but while
he gave his esteem, he could not give his heart. A want of affection breaks
out in the most trifling instances, and Plautinus had skill enough to observe
the minutest actions of the man he wished to make his friend. In these he ever
found his aim disappointed; for Musidorus claimed an exchange of hearts,
which Plautinus, solicited by a variety of claims, would never think of
bestowing.
It may easily be supposed, that the reserve of our poor proud man was
soon construed into ingratitude; and such, indeed,
in the common acceptation of the word, it was. Whenever
Musidorus appeared, he was remarked as the ungrateful man; he Fallen
had accepted favours, it was said, and still had the insolence to fortune
pretend to independence. The event, however, justified his conduct.
Plautinus, by misguided liberality, at length became poor, and it was then that
Musidorus first thought of making a friend of him. He flew to the man of
fallen fortune with an offer of all he had; wrought under his direction with
assiduity; and by uniting their talents, both were at length placed in that state
of life from which one of them had formerly fallen.
To this story, taken from modern life, I shall add one more, taken from a
Greek writer of antiquity. ‘Two Jewish soldiers, in the time of Vespasian, had
made many
campaigns together, and a participation of dangers at length bred
an union of hearts. They were marked throughout the whole army A story
as the two friendly brothers; they felt and fought for each other. from the
Their friendship might have continued without interruption till antique
death, had not the good fortune of the one alarmed the pride of the
other, which was in his promotion to be a centurion, under the famous John,
who headed a particular party of Jewish malcontents.
‘From this moment their former love was converted into the most
inveterate enmity. They attached themselves to opposite factions, and sought
each other’s lives in the conflict of adverse party. In this manner they
continued for more than two years, vowing mutual revenge and animated
with an unconquerable spirit
of aversion. At length, however, that party of the Jews to which the Jews
mean soldier belonged, joining with the Romans, it became and
victorious, and drove John with all his adherents into the Temple. Romans
History has given us more than one picture of the dreadful
conflagration of that superb edifice. The Roman soldiers were gathered round
it; the whole temple was in flames, and thousands were seen amidst them
within its sacred circuit. It was in this situation of things that the now
successful soldier saw his former friend upon the battlements of the highest
tower looking round with horror, and just ready to be consumed with flames.
All his former tenderness now returned; he saw the man of his bosom just
going to perish; and unable to withstand the impulse, he ran, spreading his
arms and
crying out to his friend to leap down from the top and find safety
with him. The centurion from above heard and obeyed, and casting A
himself from the top of the tower into his fellow-soldier’s arms, dramatic
episode
both fell a sacrifice on the spot; one being crushed to death by the
weight of his companion, and the other dashed to pieces by the greatness of
his fall.’
 VI

THE PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

 THE PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP
IFE has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship. It
L is painful to consider that this sublime enjoyment may be Life’s
impaired or destroyed by innumerable causes, and that there noblest
is no human possession of which the duration is less certain.
pleasure

Many have talked, in very exalted language, of the perpetuity of

friendship, of invincible constancy, and unalienable kindness; and some
examples have been seen of men who have continued faithful to their earliest
choice, and whose affection has predominated over changes of fortune, and
contrariety of opinion.
But these instances are memorable, because they are rare. The
friendship which is practised or expected by common mortals must Long
take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power absence destroys
ceases of delighting each other. friendship
Many accidents therefore may happen by which the ardour of
kindness will be abated, without criminal baseness or contemptible
inconstancy on either part.
To give pleasure is not always in our power; and little does he know
himself, who believes that he can be always able to receive it.
Those who would gladly pass their days together may be separated by the
different course of their affairs; and friendship, like love, is destroyed by long
absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. What we have
missed long enough to want it, we value more when it is regained;
but that which has been lost till it is forgotten, will be found at last Necessity
with little gladness, and with still less, if a substitute has supplied produces
expedients
the place. A man deprived of the companion to whom he used to
open his bosom, and with whom he shared the hours of leisure and
merriment, feels the day at first hanging heavy upon him; his difficulties
oppress, and his doubts distract him; he sees time come and go without his
wonted gratification, and all is sadness within, and solitude about him. But
this uneasiness never lasts long; necessity produces expedients, new
amusements are discovered and new conversation is admitted.
No expectation is more frequently disappointed than that which naturally
arises in the mind from the prospect of meeting an old friend after
long separation. We expect the attraction to be revived, and the Friendship
coalition to be renewed; no man considers how much alteration after separation
time has made in himself, and very few inquire what effect it has
had upon others. The first hour convinces them that the pleasure which they
had formerly enjoyed, is for ever at an end; the opinions of both are changed;
and that similitude of manners and sentiment is lost which confirmed them
both in the approbation of themselves.
Friendship is often destroyed by opposition of interest, not only by the
ponderous and visible interest which the desire of wealth and greatness forms
and maintains, but by a thousand secret and slight competitions, scarcely
known
to the mind upon which they operate. There is scarcely any man
without some favourite trifle which he values above greater Minute
attainments, some desire of petty praise which he cannot patiently ambition
suffer to be frustrated. This minute ambition is sometimes crossed before it is
known, and sometimes defeated by wanton petulance; but such attacks are
seldom made without the loss of friendship; for whoever has once found the
vulnerable part will be always feared, and the resentment will burn on in
secret, of which shame hinders the discovery.
This, however, is a slow malignity, which a wise man will obviate as
inconsistent with quiet, and a good man will repress as contrary to virtue; but
human happiness is sometimes violated by some more sudden strokes.
A dispute begun in jest upon a subject which a moment before
was on both parts regarded with careless indifference, is continued The
by the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and enemies of
opposition rankles into enmity. Against this hasty mischief, I know friendship
not what security can be obtained; men will sometimes be surprised
into quarrels; and though they might both hasten to reconciliation, as soon as
their tumult had subsided, yet two minds will seldom be found together
which can at once subdue their discontent or immediately enjoy the sweets of
peace without remembering the wounds of the conflict. Friendship has other
enemies. Suspicion is always hardening the cautious, and disgust repelling
the delicate. Very slender differences will sometimes part those whom long
reciprocation of
civility or beneficence has united. Lonelove and Ranger retired into the
country to enjoy the company of each other, and returned in six Friendship’s
weeks cold and petulant; Ranger’s pleasure was to walk in the fatal
fields, and Lonelove’s to sit in a bower; each had complied with disease
the other in his turn, and each was angry that compliance had been exacted.
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly
increased by causes too slender for complaint and too numerous for removal.
Those who are angry may be reconciled; those who have been injured may
receive a recompence; but when the decay of pleasing and willingness to be
pleased is silently diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless; as,
when the vital powers sink into languor, there is no longer any use of the
physician.
 VII

THE TRUE ART OF FRIENDSHIP

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

‘Idem velle, et idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est.’—SALLUST.

To live in friendship is to have the same desires and the same aversions.
 THE TRUE ART OF FRIENDSHIP
HE fondest and firmest friendships are dissolved by such
T openness and sincerity as interrupt our enjoyment of our own Naturally
approbation, or recall us to the remembrance of these failings enraged
which we are more willing to indulge than correct.
It is by no means necessary to imagine that he who is offended at advice
was ignorant of the fault, and resents the admonition as a false charge; for
perhaps it is most natural to be enraged when there is the strongest conviction
of our own guilt. While we can easily defend our character, we are no more
disturbed at an accusation than we are alarmed by
an enemy whom we are sure to conquer; and whose attack,
therefore, will bring us honour without danger. But when a man A
feels the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is friend’s
reprehension
easily heated into resentment and revenge, either because he hoped
that the fault of which he was conscious had escaped the notice of others; or
that his friend had looked upon it with tenderness and extenuation, and
excused it for the sake of his other virtues; or had considered him as too wise
to need advice, or, too delicate to be shocked with reproach: or, because we
cannot feel without pain those reflections round which we have been
endeavouring to lay asleep; and when pain has produced anger, who would
not willingly believe, that it ought to be discharged on others rather than on
himself?
The resentment produced by sincerity, whatever be its
immediate cause, is so certain, and generally so keen, that very few Virtue
have magnanimity sufficient for the practice of a duty which, may be
encouraged
above most others, exposes its votaries to hardships and
persecutions; yet friendship without it is of very little value, since the great
use of so close an intimacy is, that our virtues may be guarded and
encouraged, and our vices repressed in their first appearance by timely
detection and salutary remonstrances.
It is decreed by Providence, that nothing truly valuable shall be obtained
in our present state, but with difficulty and danger. He that hopes for that
advantage which is to be gained from unrestrained communication must
sometimes hazard, by unpleasing truths, that friendship
which he aspires to merit. The chief rule to be observed in the
exercise of this dangerous office, is to preserve it pure from all Our
mixture of interest or vanity; to forbear admonition or reproof, failings
when our consciences tell us that they are incited, not by the hopes of
reforming faults, but the desire of showing our discernment, or gratifying our
own pride by the mortification of another. It is not indeed certain, that the
most refined caution will find a proper time for bringing a man to the
knowledge of his own failings, or the most zealous benevolence reconcile
him to that judgment by which they are detected; but he who endeavours only
the happiness of him whom he reproves will always have either the
satisfaction of obtaining or deserving kindness; if he succeeds, he benefits his
friend; and if he
fails, he has at least the consciousness that he suffers for only doing
well. Socrates’
opinion
. . . . .
When Socrates was building himself a house at Athens, being asked by
one that observed the littleness of the design, why a man so eminent would
not have an abode more suitable to his dignity? he replied, that he should
think himself sufficiently accommodated, if he could see that narrow
habitation filled with real friends. Such was the opinion of this great master
of human life, concerning the infrequency of such a union of minds as might
deserve the name of friendship; that among the multitudes whom vanity or
curiosity, civility or veneration crowded about him, he did not expect that
very spacious apartments would be necessary to contain all that should regard
him
with sincere kindness, or adhere to him with steady fidelity.
So many qualities are indeed requisite to the possibility of Friendship
requires
friendship, and so many accidents must concur to its rise and its many
continuance, that the greatest part of mankind content themselves qualities
without it, and supply its place as they can, with interest and
independence.
Multitudes are unqualified for a constant and warm reciprocation of
benevolence, as they are incapacitated for any other elevated excellence, by
perpetual attention to their interest, and unresisting subjection to their
passions. Long habits may superinduce inability to deny any desire, or
repress, by superior motives, the importunities of any immediate
gratification, and an inveterate selfishness will imagine all advantages
diminished
in proportion as they are communicated.
But not only this hateful and confirmed corruption, but many Varieties
of
varieties of disposition, not inconsistent with common degrees of dispositions
virtue, may exclude friendship from the heart. Some, ardent enough
in their benevolence, and defective neither in officiousness nor liberality, are
mutable and uncertain, soon attracted by new objects, disgusted without
offence, and alienated without enmity. Others are soft and flexible, easily
influenced by reports or whispers, ready to catch alarms from every dubious
circumstance, and to listen to every suspicion which envy and flattery shall
suggest, to follow the opinion of every confident adviser, and move by the
impulse of the last breath. Some are impatient
of contradiction, more willing to go wrong by their own judgment
than may be indebted for a better or a safer way to the sagacity of Varieties
another, inclined to consider counsel as insult, and inquiry as want of dispositions
of confidence, and to confer their regard on no other terms than
unreserved submission and implicit compliance.—Some are dark and
involved, equally careful to conceal good and bad purposes; and pleased with
producing effects by invisible means, and showing their design only in its
execution. Others are universally communicative, alike open to every eye,
and equally profuse of their own secrets and those of others, without the
necessary vigilance of caution, or the honest arts of prudent integrity, ready
to accuse without malice, and to betray without treachery. Any of these may
be useful
to the community, and pass through the world with the reputation
of good purpose and uncorrupted morals, but they are unfit for Varieties
close and tender intimacies. He cannot properly be chosen for a of dispositions
friend, whose kindness is exhaled by his own warmth, or frozen by
the first blast of slander; he cannot be a useful counsellor, who will hear no
opinion but his own; he will not much invite confidence whose principal
maxim is to suspect; nor can candour and frankness of that man be much
esteemed, who spreads his arms to humankind, and makes every man,
without distinction, a denizen of his bosom.
That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be
equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end
must be proposed, but the same means must be
approved by both. We are often, by superficial accomplishments
and accidental endearments, induced to love those whom we Candidates
cannot esteem; we are sometimes, by great abilities, and for friendship
incontestable evidences of virtue, compelled to esteem those whom
we cannot love. But friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives
from one its tenderness, and its permanence from the other; and therefore,
requires not only that its candidates should gain the judgment, but that they
should attract the affections; that they should not only be firm in the day of
distress, but gay in the hour of jollity; not only useful in exigencies, but
pleasing in familiar life; their presence should give cheerfulness as well as
courage, and dispel alike the gloom of fear and of melancholy.
To this mutual complacency is generally requisite a uniformity
of opinions, at least of those active and conspicuous principles Mutual
which discriminate parties in government and sects in religion, and complacency
which every day operate more or less on the common business of life. For
though great tenderness has, perhaps, been sometimes known to continue
between men eminently in contrary factions; yet such friends are to be shown
rather as prodigies than examples; and it is no more proper to regulate our
conduct by such instances than to leap a precipice, because some have fallen
from it and escaped with life.
It cannot but be extremely difficult to preserve private kindness in the
midst of public opposition, in which will necessarily be involved a thousand
incidents, extending their influence to conversation
and privacy. Men engaged, by moral or religious motives, in
contrary parties will generally look with different eyes upon every Private
man, and decide almost every question upon different principles. kindness
When such occasions of dispute happen, to comply is to betray our cause, and
to maintain friendship, by ceasing to deserve it; to be silent is to lose the
happiness and dignity of independence, to live in perpetual constraint, and to
desert if not to betray; and who shall determine which of two friends shall
yield, where neither believes himself mistaken, and both confess the
importance of the question? What then remains but contradiction and debate?
and from these what can be expected but acrimony and vehemence, the
insolence of triumph, the vexation of defeat, and, in time, a weariness of
contest,
and an extinction of benevolence? Exchange of endearments and
intercourse of civility may continue, indeed, as boughs may for a The
while be verdant when the root is wounded; but the poison of pleasures and
discord is infused, and though the countenance may preserve its cares of
smile, the heart is hardening and contracting. friends

That man will not be long agreeable whom we see only in times of
seriousness and severity; and, therefore, to maintain the softness and serenity
of benevolence, it is necessary that friends partake each other’s pleasures as
well as cares, and be led to the same diversions by similitude of taste. This is,
however, not to be considered as equally indispensable with conformity of
principles, because any man may honestly, according to Horace, resign the
gratifications of taste to the
humour of another, and friendship may well deserve the sacrifice
of pleasure, though not of conscience. The
flame
It was once confessed to me, by a painter, that no professor of of
his art ever loved another. This declaration is so far justified by the friendship
knowledge of life as to damp the hopes of warm and constant
friendship between men whom their studies have made competitors, and
whom every favourer and every censurer are hourly inciting against each
other. The utmost expectation that experience can warrant us, is, that they
should forbear open hostilities and secret machinations, and when the whole
fraternity is attacked, be able to unite against a common foe. Some, however,
though few, may perhaps be found in whom emulation has not been able to
overpower generosity,
who are distinguished from lower beings by nobler motives than
the love of fame, and can preserve the sacred flame of friendship Imperfect
earthly
from the gusts of pride and the rubbish of interest. blessings
Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the
superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.
Benefits which cannot be repaid, and obligations which cannot be discharged,
are not commonly found to increase affection; they excite gratitude indeed,
and heighten veneration, but commonly take away that easy freedom and
familiarity of intercourse, without which, though there may be fidelity and
zeal and admiration, there cannot be friendship.
Thus imperfect are all earthly blessings; the great effect of friendship is
beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is
endangered, like plants that bear fruit and die. Yet this Duty before
consideration ought not to restrain bounty or repress compassion; convenience
for duty is to be preferred before convenience, and he that loses
part of the pleasures of friendship by his generosity, gains in its place the
gratulation of his conscience.
 VIII

THE VIRTUE OF FRIENDSHIP

GEORGE BERKELEY
 THE VIRTUE OF FRIENDSHIP
F we consider the whole scope of the creation that lies within
I our view, the moral and intellectual, as well as the natural and The
corporeal, we shall perceive throughout, a certain universe
correspondence of the parts, a similitude of operation, and unity of design,
which plainly demonstrate the universe to be the work of one infinitely good
and wise being; and that the system of thinking beings is actuated by laws
derived from the same divine power which ordained those by which the
corporeal system is upheld.
From the contemplation of the order, motion, and cohesion of natural
bodies, philosophers are now agreed, that there is a mutual attraction between
the most
distant parts at least of this solar system. All those bodies that
revolve round the sun are drawn towards each other, and towards Mutual
the sun, by some secret, uniform, and never-ceasing principle. attraction
Hence it is that the earth (as well as the other planets), without flying off in a
tangent line, constantly rolls about the sun, and the moon about the earth,
without deserting her companion in so many thousand years. And as the
larger systems of the universe are held together by this cause, so likewise the
particular globes derive their cohesion and consistence from it.
Now if we carry our thoughts from the corporeal to the moral world, we
may observe in the spirits or minds of men, a like principle of attraction,
whereby they are drawn together in communities, clubs, families, friendships,
and all the
various species of society. As in bodies, where the quantity is the
same, the attraction is strongest between those which are placed Mutual
nearest to each other; so it is likewise in the minds of men, cæteris attraction
paribus, between those which are most nearly related. Bodies that are placed
at the distance of many millions of miles, may nevertheless attract and
constantly operate on each other, although this action do not show itself by a
union or approach of those distant bodies so long as they are withheld by the
contrary forces of other bodies, which, at the same time, attract them different
ways; but would, on the supposed removal of all other bodies, mutually
approach and unite with each other. The like holds with regard to the human
soul, whose affection towards the individuals of the same species,
who are distantly related to it, is rendered inconspicuous by its
more powerful attraction towards those who have a nearer relation The soul’s
to it. But as those are removed, the tendency which before lay affection
concealed, doth gradually disclose itself.
A man who has no family is more strongly attracted towards his friends
and neighbours; and if absent from these, he naturally falls into an
acquaintance with those of his own city or country who chance to be in the
same place. Two Englishmen meeting at Rome or Constantinople, soon run
into familiarity. And in China or Japan, Europeans would think their being so
a good reason for their uniting in particular converse. Farther, in case we
suppose ourselves translated into Jupiter or Saturn, and there to meet a
Chinese or other more distant
native of our own planet, we should look on him as a near relation,
and readily commence a friendship with him. These are natural Natural
reflections, and such as may convince us that we are linked by an reflections
imperceptible chain to every individual of the human race.
The several great bodies which compose the solar system are kept from
joining together at the common centre of gravity by the rectilinear motions
the author of nature has impressed on each of them; which, concurring with
the attractive principle, form their respective orbits round the sun; upon the
ceasing of which motions, the general law of gravitation that is now thwarted,
would show itself by drawing them all into one mass. After the same manner,
in the parallel case of society, private passions
and motions of the soul do often obstruct the operation of that
benevolent uniting instinct implanted in human nature; which, Mutual
notwithstanding, doth still exert, and will not fail to show itself gravitation
when those obstructions are taken away.
The mutual gravitation of bodies cannot be explained any other way than
by resolving it into the immediate operation of God, who never ceases to
dispose and actuate his creatures in a manner suitable to their respective
beings. So neither can that reciprocal attraction in the minds of men be
accounted for by any other cause. It is not the result of education, law, or
fashion; but is a principle originally ingrafted in the very first formation of
the soul by the author of our nature.
And as the attractive power in bodies
is the most universal principle which produceth innumerable
effects, and is a key to explain the various phenomena of nature; so Sympathy
the corresponding social appetite in human souls is the great spring in our
and source of moral actions. This it is that inclines each individual nature
to an intercourse with his species, and models every one to that behaviour
which best suits with the common well-being. Hence that sympathy in our
nature, whereby we feel the pains and joys of our fellow creatures. Hence that
prevalent love in parents towards their children, which is neither founded on
the merit of the object, nor yet on self-interest. It is this that makes us
inquisitive concerning the affairs of distant nations, which can have no
influence on our own. It is this that extends our care to future generations,
and excites us to acts of beneficence towards those who are not yet
in being, and consequently from whom we can expect no The
recompence. In a word, hence arises that diffusive sense of duty of
mankind
humanity so unaccountable to the selfish man who is untouched
with it, and is indeed a sort of monster, or anomalous production.
These thoughts do naturally suggest the following particulars. First, that as
social inclinations are absolutely necessary to the well-being of the world, it
is the duty and interest of each individual to cherish and improve them to the
benefit of mankind; the duty, because it is agreeable to the intention of the
author of our being, who aims at the common good of his creatures, and as an
indication of his will, hath implanted the seeds of mutual benevolence in our
souls; the
interest, because the good of the whole is inseparable from that of
the parts; in promoting, therefore, the common good, every one The
doth at the same time promote his own private interest. Another proof of
religion
observation I shall draw from the premises is, that it makes a signal
proof of the divinity of the Christian religion, that the main duty which it
inculcates above all others is charity. Different maxims and precepts have
distinguished the different sects of philosophy and religion; our Lord’s
peculiar precept is, ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself. By this shall all men
know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’
I will not say, that what is a most shining proof of our religion, is not often
a reproach to its professors: but this I think very plain, that whether we regard
the analogy of nature, as it appears in the mutual attraction or
gravitations of the mundane system, in the general frame and The
constitution of the human soul; or lastly, in the ends and aptnesses nobility
of
which are discoverable in all parts of the visible and intellectual religion
world; we shall not doubt but the precept, which is the
characteristic of our religion, came from the author of nature. Some of our
modern free-thinkers would indeed insinuate the Christian morals to be
defective, because, say they, there is no mention made in the gospel of the
virtue of friendship. These sagacious men (if I may be allowed the use of that
vulgar saying) ‘cannot see the wood for trees.’ That a religion, whereof the
main drift is to inspire its professors with the most noble and disinterested
spirit of love, charity, and
beneficence, to all mankind; or, in other words, with a friendship to
every individual man; should be taxed with the want of that very Religion
virtue is surely a glaring evidence of the blindness and prejudice of vindicated
its adversaries.

nbsp;
 IX

ON THE CHOICE OF FRIENDS

SIR RICHARD STEELE
 ON THE CHOICE OF FRIENDS
HEN a man is in a serious mood, and ponders upon his
W own make, with a retrospect to the actions of his life, and Our
the many fatal miscarriages in it, which he owes to reason
ungoverned passions, he is then apt to say to himself, that temper
and our

experience has guarded him against such errors for the future: but
nature often recurs in spite of his best resolutions; and it is to the very end of
our days a struggle between our reason and our temper, which shall have the
empire over us. However, this is very much to be helped by circumspection,
and a constant alarm against the first onsets of passion. As this is, in general,
a necesary
care to make a man’s life easy and agreeable to himself; so it is
more particularly the duty of such as are engaged in friendship, and Joys
nearer commerce with others. Those who have their joys have also and griefs
their griefs in proportion; and none can extremely exalt or depress in
friends, but friends. The harsh things which come from the rest of proportion
the world are received and repulsed with that spirit, which every
honest man bears for his own vindication; but unkindness, in words or
actions, among friends, affects us at the first instant in the inmost recesses of
our souls. Indifferent people, if I may so say, can wound us only in
heterogeneous parts, maim us in our legs or arms; but the friend can make no
pass but at the heart itself. On the other side, the most impotent assistance,
the mere well wishes of
a friend, gives a man constancy and courage against the most
prevailing force of his enemies. It is here only a man enjoys and Friendship
suffers to the quick. For this reason the most gentle behaviour is and marriage
absolutely necessary to maintain friendship in any degree above the
common level of acquaintance. But there is a relation of life much more near
than the most strict and savoured friendship, that is to say, marriage. This
union is of too close and delicate a nature to be easily conceived by those
who do not know that condition by experience. Here a man should, if
possible, soften his passions; if not for his own ease, in compliance to a
creature formed with a mind of a quite different make from his own. I am
sure, I do not mean it an injury to women, when I say there is a sort of sex in
souls.
I am tender of offending them, and know it is hard not to do it
on this subject; but I must go on to say, that the soul of a man, and Sex in
that of a woman, are made very unlike, according to the souls
employments for which they are designed. The ladies will please to observe, I
say, our minds have different, not superior qualities to theirs. The virtues
have respectively a masculine and a feminine cast. What we call in men
wisdom, is in women prudence. It is a partiality, to call one greater than the
other. A prudent woman is in the same class of honour as a wise man, and the
scandals in the way of both are equally dangerous. But to make this state
anything but a burden, and not hang a weight upon our very beings, it is
proper each of the couple should frequently remember, that there are many
things which grow
out of their very natures that are pardonable, nay, becoming, when
considered as such, but, without that reflection, must give the Characteristics
quickest pain and vexation. To manage well a great family is as of and
men

worthy an instance of capacity as to execute a great employment: women

and for the generality, as women perform the considerable part of
their duties, as well as men do theirs; so in their common behaviour, females
of ordinary genius are not more trivial than the common rate of men; and, in
my opinion, the playing of a fan is every whit as good an entertainment as the
beating of a snuff-box.
But, however, I have rambled in this libertine manner of writing by way of
Essay, I now sat down with an intention to represent to my readers how
pernicious, how sudden, and how fatal
surprises of passion are to the mind of man; and that in the more
intimate commerces of life they are more liable to arise, even in Passion’s
our most sedate and indolent hours. Occurrences of this kind have terrible
effects
had very terrible effects; and when one reflects upon them, we
cannot but tremble to consider what we are capable of being wrought up to,
against all the ties of nature, love, honour, reason, and religion, though the
man who breaks through them all, had, an hour before he did so, a lively and
virtuous sense of their dictates. When unhappy catastrophes make up part of
the history of princes and persons who act in high spheres, or are represented
in the moving language and well-wrought scenes of tragedians, they do not
fail of striking us with terror; but then they affect us only in a transient
manner, and
pass through our imaginations as incidents in which our fortunes
are too humble to be concerned, or which writers form for the Mistaking
ostentation of their own force; or, at most, as things fit rather to fortune
for
exercise the powers of our minds, than to create new habits in nature
them. Instead of such high passages, I was thinking it would be of
great use, if anybody could hit it, to lay before the world such adventures as
befall persons not exalted above the common level. This, methought, would
better prevail upon the ordinary race of men; who are so prepossessed with
outward appearances, that they mistake fortune for nature, and believe
nothing can relate to them, that does not happen to such as live and look like
themselves.
 X

THE QUALIFICATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP

JOSEPH ADDISON
 THE QUALIFICATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP
‘Nos duo turba sumus.’—OVID.

We two are a multitude.

NE would think that the larger the company is in which we

O are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects Of
would be started in discourse; but, instead of this, we find
that conversation is never so much straitened and confined as in
conversation

numerous assemblies. When a multitude meet together on any subject of

discourse, their debates are taken up chiefly with forms and general positions;
nay, if we come into a more contracted assembly of men and women, the talk
generally runs upon the weather, fashions, news, and the like public topics. In
proportion as
conversation gets into clubs and knots of friends, it descends into
particulars, and friends grows more free and communicative: but Discourse
the most open, instructive, and unreserved discourse, is that which between
intimate
passes between two persons who are familiar and intimate friends. friends
On these occasions, a man gives a loose to every passion and every
thought that is uppermost, discovers his most retired opinions of persons and
things, tries the beauty and strength of his sentiments, and exposes his whole
soul to the examination of his friend.
Tully was the first who observed that friendship improves happiness and
abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and dividing of our grief; a thought
in which he hath been followed by all the essayers upon friendship that have
written since his time. Sir Francis Bacon has finely described
other advantages, or, as he calls them, fruits of friendship; and,
indeed, there is no subject of morality which has been better The art
handled and more exhausted than this. Among the several fine of making
things which have been spoken of it, I shall beg leave to quote friends
some out of a very ancient author,[1] whose book would be
regarded by our modern wits as one of the most shining tracts of morality that
is extant, if it appeared under the name of a Confucius, or of any celebrated
Grecian philosopher: I mean the little apocryphal treatise, entitled The
Wisdom of the Son of Sirach. How finely has he described the art of making
friends by an obliging and affable behaviour! And laid down that precept,
which a late excellent author has delivered as his own, that we should have
many
[1] The quotations made are from Ecclesiasticus.—ED.
well-wishers, but few friends. ‘Sweet language will multiply
friends; and a fair-speaking tongue will increase kind greetings. Be The
in peace with many, nevertheless have but one councellor of a choice of our
thousand.’ With what prudence does he caution us in the choice of friends
our friends! And with what strokes of nature (I could almost say of
humour) has he described the behaviour of a treacherous and self-interested
friend! ‘If thou wouldest get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to
credit him: for some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide
in the day of thy trouble. And there is a friend who being turned to enmity
and strife, will discover thy reproach.’ Again, ‘Some friend is a companion at
the table, and will not continue in the day of thy affliction; but, in thy
prosperity he will be as thyself,
and will be bold over thy servants. If thou be brought low he will
be against thee, and hide himself from thy face.’ What can be more An
strong and pointed than the following verse? ‘Separate thyself from eulogium
of
thine enemies, and take heed of thy friends.’ In the next words he friendship
particularises one of those fruits of friendship which is described at
length by the two famous authors above mentioned, and falls into a general
eulogium of friendship which is very just as well as very sublime. ‘A faithful
friend is a strong defence; and he that hath found such a one hath found a
treasure. Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is
valuable. A faithful friend is the medicine of life; and they that fear the Lord
shall find him. Whoso feareth the Lord shall direct his friendship
aright; for as he is, so shall his neighbour (that is his friend) be
also.’ Friends
new
I do not remember to have met with any saying that has pleased and old
me more than that of a friend’s being the medicine of life, to
express the efficacy of friendship in healing the pains and anguish which
naturally cleave to our existence in this world; and am wonderfully pleased
with the turn in the last sentence, that a virtuous man shall as a blessing meet
with a friend who is as virtuous as himself. There is another saying in the
same author, which would have been very much admired in an heathen
writer: ‘Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him; a
new friend is as new wine; when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure.’
With what strength of allusion and force of thought has he described the
breaches and violations of friendship?—‘Whoso casteth a stone
at the birds frayeth them away; and he that upbraideth his friend,
breaketh friendship. Though thou drawest a sword at a friend, yet Familiar
despair not, for there may be a returning to favour. If thou hast sentences
opened thy mouth against thy friend, fear not, for there may be a
reconciliation; except for upbraiding, or pride, or disclosing of secrets, or a
treacherous wound; for, for these things every friend will depart.’ We may
observe in this and several other precepts in this author, those little, familiar
sentences and illustrations which are so much admired in the moral writings
of Horace and Epictetus. There are very beautiful instances of this nature in
the following passages, which are likewise written upon the same subject.
‘Whoso discovereth secrets, loseth his credit, and shall never find a friend to
his mind. Love thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but
if thou bewrayeth his secret follow no more after him: for as a man
hath destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; Qualifications
as one that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy of a
good
friend go, and shall not get him again; follow after him no more, friend
for he is too far off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare. As for a
wound it may be bound up, and after reviling there may be a reconciliation:
but he that bewrayeth secrets is without hope.’
Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise man has very
justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the principal: to these, others
have added virtue, knowledge, discretion, equality in age and fortune, and
Cicero calls it Morum comitas, ‘a pleasantness of temper.’ If I were to give
my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I should join to these
other qualifications, a certain equability or evenness of behaviour.
A man often contracts a friendship with one whom perhaps he does Martial’s
not find out till after a year’s conversation; when on a sudden some epigram
latent ill humour breaks out upon him, which he never discovered or
suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him. There are several
who in certain periods of their lives are inexpressibly agreeable, and in others
as odious and detestable. Martial has given us a very pretty picture of one of
this species, in the following epigram:
‘Difficilis, facilis, jucundus, acerbus es idem,
Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.’

In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,

Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship with

one, who, by these changes and vicissitudes of humour, is Our greatest
sometimes amiable, and sometimes odious: and as most men are at task
some time in admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should be
one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves well when we are so,
and never to go out of that which is the agreeable part of our character.
 XI

OF FRIENDSHIP
FRANCIS BACON
 OF FRIENDSHIP
T had been hard for him that spake it, to have put more truth and
I untruth together, in few words, than in that speech; ‘Whosoever Solitude
is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast, or a god.’ For it is and
most true, that a natural and secret hatred, and aversation
friendship

towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is
most untrue, that it should have any character, at all, of the divine nature;
except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and
desire to sequester a man’s self for a higher conversation: such as is found to
have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides the
Candian, Numa the Roman,
Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly
and really, in divers of the ancient hermits, and holy fathers of the Friendship
Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is and how far it in cities
extendeth. For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of
pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin
adage meeteth with it a little; ‘Magna civitas, magna solitudo’; because in a
great town friends are scattered; so that there is not that fellowship, for the
most part, which is in less neighbourhoods. But we may go further, and
affirm most truly; that it is a mere, and miserable solitude, to want true
friends; without which the world is but a wilderness: and even in this sense
also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is
unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from
humanity. The
fruit of
A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the friendship
fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do
cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings, and suffocations, are the
most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind: you
may take sarza to open the liver; steel to open the spleen; flower of sulphur
for the lungs; castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a
true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions,
counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart, to oppress it, in a kind of civil
shrift or confession.
 It is a strange thing to observe, how high a rate great kings and monarchs,
do
set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak: so great, as they
purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their own safety, and The
greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune, friendship
of
from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit; princes
except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some
persons, to be as it were companions, and almost equals to themselves, which
many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such
persons the name of favourites, or privadoes; as if it were matter of grace, or
conversation. But the Roman name attaineth the true use, and cause thereof;
naming them participes curarum; for it is that which tieth the knot. And we
see plainly, that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes
only, but by
the wisest, and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes
joined to themselves some of their servants; whom both themselves Sylla
have called friends; and allowed others likewise to call them in the and
Pompey
same manner; using the word which is received between private
men.
L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the
Great) to that height, that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla’s overmatch. For
when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of
Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great,
Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet; ‘for that
more men adored the sun rising, than the sun setting.’ With Julius Cæsar,
Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he set him down, in his
testament,
for heir in remainder, after his nephew. And this was the man that
had power with him to draw him forth to his death. For when Mæcenas
Cæsar would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill
presages, and specially a dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by
the arm, out of his chair, telling him, he hoped he would not dismiss the
senate, till his wife had dreamed a better dream. And it seemeth, his favour
was so great, as Antonius in a letter, which is recited verbatim, in one of
Cicero’s Philippics, calleth him venefica, witch; as if he had enchanted
Cæsar. Augustus raised Agrippa (though of mean birth) to that height, as
when he consulted with Mæcenas, about the marriage of his daughter Julia,
Mæcenas took the liberty to tell him; ‘That he must either marry his
daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life, there was no third way,
he had made him so great.’ With Tiberius Cæsar, Sejanus had Friendship’s
ascended to that height, as they two were termed and reckoned as a altar
pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter to him saith; ‘Hæc pro amicitiâ nostrâ non
occultavi.’ And the whole senate dedicated an altar to friendship as to a
goddess, in respect of the great dearness of friendship between them two. The
like or more was between Septimius Severus, and Plautianus. For he forced
his eldest son to marry the daughter of Plautianus; and would often maintain
Plautianus, in doing affronts to his son; and did write also in a letter to the
senate, by these words; ‘I love the man so well, as I wish he may overlive
me.’ Now if these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus
Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had proceeded of
an abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of such The
strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers of themselves, comfort
of
as all these were; it proveth most plainly, that they found their own friendship
felicity (though as great as ever happened to mortal men) but as a
half-piece, except they might have a friend to make it entire: and yet, which is
more, they were princes that had wives, sons, nephews; and yet all these
could not supply the comfort of friendship.
It is not to be forgotten, what Commineus observeth, of his first master
Duke Charles the Hardy; namely, that he would communicate his secrets with
none; and, least of all, those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon
he goeth on, and saith, that towards his latter time; ‘that closeness
did impair, and a little perish his understanding.’ Surely Of
Commineus might have made the same judgment also, if it had communicatingone’s
pleased him, of his second master Lewis the Eleventh, whose self
closeness was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is
dark, but true; ‘Cor ne edito’ (eat not the heart). Certainly, if a man would
give it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves unto are
cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I
will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating
of a man’s self to his friend, works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth
joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is no man, that imparteth his joys
to his friend, but
he joyeth the more; and no man, that imparteth his griefs to his Friendship
friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in truth of operation maketh
upon a man’s mind, of like virtue as the alchemists use to attribute aday fair

to their stone for man’s body; that it worketh all contrary effects,
but still to the good, and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying in aid of
alchemists, there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature.
For in bodies union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action; and, on
the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent impression: and even so is
it of minds.
The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the
understanding, as the first is for the affections. For friendship maketh indeed
a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempests: but
it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and
confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of Of
faithful counsel, which a man receiveth from his friend; but before discourse
with a
you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind fraught friend
with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and
break up, in the communicating and discoursing with another: he tosseth his
thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they
look when they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth wiser than himself;
and that more by an hour’s discourse, than by a day’s meditation. It was well
said by Themistocles to the King of Persia; ‘That speech was like cloth of
Arras, opened, and put abroad; whereby the imagery doth
appear in figure; whereas in thoughts, they lie but as in packs.’
Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening the Of
understanding, restrained only to such friends as are able to give a friendly
counsel
man counsel: (they indeed are best) but even, without that, a man
learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his
wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better
relate himself to a statue, or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in
smother.
Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other
point, which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation; which is
faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well, in one of his enigmas;
‘Dry light is ever the best.’ And certain it is, that
the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another, is drier, and purer,
than that which cometh from his own understanding, and judgment; Of
which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. friendly
So as, there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend counsel
giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a
friend, and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self; and
there is no such remedy, against flattery of a man’s self, as the liberty of a
friend. Counsel is of two sorts; the one concerning manners, the other
concerning business. For the first; the best preservative to keep the mind in
health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man’s self to a
strict account is a medicine sometime too piercing and
corrosive. Reading good books of morality is a little flat, and dead.
Observing our faults in others is sometimes improper for our case. Of
But the best receipt (best (I say) to work, and best to take) is the admonition
admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold, what gross errors, and
extreme absurdities, many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want
of a friend, to tell them of them; to the great damage, both of their fame and
fortune. For, as St. James saith, they are as men, ‘that look sometimes into a
glass, and presently forget their own shape, and favour.’ As for business, a
man may think, if he will, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a
gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or that a man in anger is as
wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty letters; or that a
musket may be shot off as well upon the arm, as upon a rest; and
such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all. The
But when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which setteth help good
of

business straight. And if any man think that he will take counsel, counsel
but it shall be by pieces; asking counsel in one business of one
man, and in another business of another man: it is well (that is to say, better
perhaps than if he asked none at all); but he runneth two dangers: one, that he
shall not be faithfully counselled; for it is a rare thing, except it be from a
perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed
and crooked to some ends, which he hath that giveth it. The other, that he
shall have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with good meaning), and
mixed,
partly of mischief, and partly of remedy: even as if you would call
a physician, that is thought good, for the cure of the disease you Scattered
complain of, but is unacquainted with your body; and therefore, counsels to be
may put you in way for a present cure, but overthroweth your avoided
health in some other kind; and so cure the disease, and kill the
patient. But a friend, that is wholly acquainted with a man’s estate, will
beware by furthering any present business how he dasheth upon other
inconvenience. And therefore, rest not upon scattered counsels; they will
rather distract, and mislead, than settle and direct.
After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections, and
support of the judgment) followeth the last fruit; which is like the
pomegranate, full of many kernels; I mean aid, and bearing
a part, in all actions, and occasions. Here, the best way to represent
to life the manifold use of friendship is to cast and see how many Friendship’s
things there are which a man cannot do himself; and then it will uses
appear, that it was a sparing speech of the ancients to say, ‘That a friend is
another himself’: for that a friend is far more than himself. Men have their
time, and die many times in desire of some things which they principally take
to heart; the bestowing of a child, the finishing of a work, or the like. If a man
have a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will
continue after him. So that a man hath as it were two lives in his desires. A
man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship
is, all offices of life are as it were granted to him, and his deputy. For he may
exercise
them by his friend. How many things are there which a man
cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can That
scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them: a friendship
is
man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg: and a number of valuable
the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend’s mouth, which
are blushing in a man’s own. So again, a man’s person hath many proper
relations, which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son, but as a
father; to his wife, but as a husband; to his enemy, but upon terms: whereas a
friend may speak, as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person.
But to enumerate these things were endless: I have given the rule, where a
man cannot fitly play his own part: if he have not a friend, he may quit the
stage.
 XII

OF FRIENDSHIP
MICHAEL, LORD OF MONTAIGNE

. . . . .
HERE is nothing to which Nature hath more addressed us
T than to society. And Aristotle saith, that perfect Law-givers Society
have had more regardful care of friendship than of justice.
And the utmost drift of its perfection is this. For generally, all those
amities which are forged and nourished by voluptuousness or profit, public or
private need, are thereby so much the less fair and generous, and so much the
less true amities, in that they intermeddle other causes, scope, and fruit with
friendship, than itself alone: Nor do those four ancient kinds of friendships,
Natural, social, hospitable, and venerian, either particularly or conjointly
beseem the same. That from children to parents may rather be
termed respect: Friendship is nourished by communication, which The
by reason of the over-great disparity cannot be found in them, and chief offices
would happily offend the duties of nature: for neither all the secret of
thoughts of parents can be communicated unto children, lest it friendship
might engender an unbeseeming familiarity between them, nor the
admonitions and corrections (which are the chiefest offices of friendship)
could be exercised from children to parents. There have nations been found,
where, by custom, children killed their parents, and others, where parents
slew their children, thereby to avoid the hindrance of enter-bearing one
another in aftertimes: for naturally one dependeth from the ruin of another....
Verily the name of Brother is
a glorious name, and full of loving kindness, and therefore did he
and I term one another sworn brother: but this commixture, A
dividence, and sharing of goods, this joining wealth to wealth, and glorious
name
that the riches of one shall be the poverty of another, doth
exceedingly distemper and distract all brotherly alliance, and lovely
conjunction: If brothers should conduct the progress of their advancement
and thrift in one same path and course, they must necessarily oftentimes
hinder and cross one another. Moreover, the correspondency and relation that
begetteth these true and mutually perfect amities, why shall it be found in
these? The father and the son may very well be of a far differing complexion,
and so [may] brothers: He is my son, he is my kinsman; but he may be a fool,
a bad, or a
peevish-minded man. And then according as they are friendships,
which the law and duty of nature doth command us, so much the Father
less of our own voluntary choice and liberty is there required unto and son
it: And our genuine liberty hath no production more properly her own, than
that of affection and amity. Sure I am, that concerning the same I have
assayed all that might be, having had the best and most indulgent father that
ever was, even to his extremest age, and who from father to son was
descended of a famous house, and touching this rare-seen virtue of brotherly
concord very exemplary:
‘—et ipse
Notus in fratres animi paterni.’
HOR. ii. Od. ii. 6.

To his brothers known so kind,

As to bear a father’s mind.

To compare the affection toward

women unto it, although it proceed from our own free choice, a
man cannot, nor may it be placed in this rank: Her fire, I confess it True
friendship
‘(—neque enim est dea nescia nostri
Quæ dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.)’

(Nor is that Goddess ignorant of me,

Whose bitter-sweets with my cares mixed be.)

to be more active, more fervent, and more sharp. But it is a rash and wavering
fire, waving and divers: the fire of an ague subject to fits and stints, and that
hath but slender hold-fast of us. In true friendship, it is a general and
universal heat, and equally tempered, a constant and settled heat, all pleasure
and smoothness, that hath no pricking or stinging in it, which the more it is in
lustful love, the more is it but a ranging and mad desire in following that
which flies us,
‘Come segue la lepre il cacciatore
The
Al freddo, al caldo, alla montagna, al lito,
enjoyment
Ne piu l’estima poi che presa vede,
of
E sol dietro a chi fugge affretta il piede.’
friendship
ARIOS., can. x. st. 7.

Ev’n as the huntsman doth the hare pursue,

In cold, in heat, on mountains, on the shore,
But cares no more, when he her ta’en espies,
Speeding his pace, only at that which flies.

As soon as it creepeth into the terms of friendship, that is to say, in the

agreement of wills, it languisheth and vanisheth away: enjoying doth lose it,
as having a corporal end, and subject to sacietie. On the other side, friendship
is enjoyed according as it is desired, it is neither bred, nor nourished, nor
increaseth but in jovissance, as being spiritual, and the mind being refined by
use and custom. Under this chief amity, these fading affections have
sometimes found place in me, lest I should speak of him, who in his verses
speaks but too much of it. So are these two passions entered into
me in knowledge one of another, but in comparison never: the first Marriage
flying a high, and keeping a proud pitch, disdainfully beholding the and friendship
other to pass her points far under it. Concerning marriage, besides
that it is a covenant which hath nothing free but the entrance, the continuance
being forced and constrained, depending elsewhere than from our will, and a
match ordinarily concluded to other ends: A thousand strange knots are
therein commonly to be unknit, able to break the web, and trouble the whole
course of a lively affection; whereas in friendship, there is no commerce or
business depending on the same, but itself. Seeing (to speak truly) that the
ordinary sufficiency of women, cannot answer this conference
and communication, the nurse of this sacred bond: nor seem their
minds strong enough to endure the pulling of a knot so hard, so Complete
fast, and durable. And truly, if without that, such a genuine and friendship
voluntary acquaintance might be contracted, where not only minds had this
entire jovissance, but also bodies, a share of the alliance, and where a man
might wholly be engaged: It is certain, that friendship would thereby be more
complete and full: But this sex could never yet by any example attain unto it,
and is by ancient schools rejected thence. And this other Greek licence is
justly abhorred by our customs, which notwithstanding, because according to
use it had so necessary a disparity of ages, and difference of offices between
lovers, did no more sufficiently answer the perfect
union and agreement, which here we require: ‘Quis est enim iste
amor amicitiæ? cur neque deformem adolescentem quisquam amat, External
beauty
neque formosum senem?’ (CIC., Tusc. Que. iv.). For, what love is
this of friendship? why doth no man love either a deformed young man, or a
beautiful old man? For even the picture the Academie makes of it, will not (as
I suppose) disavow me, to say thus in her behalf: That the first fury, inspired
by the son of Venus in the lover’s heart, upon the object of tender youth’s-
flower, to which they allow all insolent and passionate violences, an
immoderate heat may produce, was simply grounded upon an external
beauty; a false image of corporal generation: for in the spirit it had no power,
the sight whereof was yet concealed, which was but in his
infancy, and before the age of budding. For, if this fury did seize
upon a base minded courage, the means of its pursuit, [were] The
riches, gifts, favour to the advancement of dignities, and such like lover
vile merchandice, which they reprove. If it fell into a most generous mind,
the interpositions were likewise generous: Philosophical instructions,
documents to reverence religion, to obey the laws, to die for the good of his
country: examples of valour, wisdom and justice. The lover endeavouring
and studying to make himself acceptable by the good grace and beauty of his
mind (that of his body being long since decayed) hoping by this mental
society to establish a more firm and permanent bargain. When this pursuit
attained the effect in due season (for by not requiring in a
lover, he should bring leasure and discretion in his enterprise, they
require it exactly in the beloved; forasmuch as he was to judge of Spiritual
an internal beauty, of a difficile knowledge, and abstruse beauty
discovery) [then] by the interposition of a spiritual beauty was the desire of a
spiritual conception engendred in the beloved. The latter was here chiefest;
the corporal, accidental and second, altogether contrary to the lover. And
therefore do they prefer the beloved, and verify that the gods likewise prefer
the same: and greatly blame the Poet Æschylus, who in the love between
Achilles and Patroclus ascribeth the lover’s part unto Achilles, who was in
the first and beardless youth of his adolescency, and the fairest of the
Græcians. After this general community, the mistress and
worthiest part of it, predominant and exercising her offices (they
say the most availful commodity did thereby redound both to the A
private and public). That it was the force of countries received the definition
of love
use of it, and the principal defence of equity and liberty: witness
the comfortable loves of Hermodius and Aristogiton. Therefore name they it
sacred and divine, and it concerns not them whether the violence of tyrants,
or the demisness of the people be against them: To conclude, all can be
alleaged in favour of the Academy, is to say, that it was a love ending in
friendship, a thing which hath no bad reference unto the Stoical definition of
love: ‘Amorem conatum esse amicitiæ faciendæ ex pulchritudinis specie’
(CIC., ibid.). That love is an endeavour of making friendship, by the shew of
beauty.
I return to my description in a more equitable and equal manner.
‘Omnino amicitiæ corroboratis jam confirmatisque ingeniis et How
friendships
ætatibus judicandæ sunt’ (CIC., Amic.). Clearly friendships are to are to
be judged by wits, and ages already strengthened and confirmed. be judged
As for the rest, those we ordinarily call friends and amities, are but
acquaintances and familiarities, tied together by some occasion or
commodities, by means whereof our minds are entertained. In the amity I
speak of, they intermix and confound themselves one in the other, with so
universal a commixture, that they wear out, and can no more find the seam
that hath conjoined them together. If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved
him, I feel it cannot be expressed, but by answering: Because it was he,
because it was myself.
There is beyond all my discourse, and besides what I can
particularly report of it, I know not what inexplicable and fatal A
power, a mean and Mediatrix of this indissoluble union. We sought preordained
friendship
one another, before we had seen one another, and by the reports we
heard one of another; which wrought a greater violence in us, than the reason
of reports may well bear: I think by some secret ordinance of the heavens, we
embraced one another by our names. And at our first meeting, which was by
chance at a great feast, and solemn meeting of a whole township, we found
ourselves so surprized, so known, so acquainted, and so combinedly bound
together, that from thence forward, nothing was so near unto us, as one unto
another. He writ an excellent Latin Satire; since published; by
which he excuseth and expoundeth the precipitation of our
acquaintance, so suddenly come to her perfection; Sithence it must A first
continue so short a time, and begun so late (for we were both meeting
grown men, and he some years older than myself) there was no time to be
lost. And it was not to be modelled or directed by the pattern of regular and
remiss friendship, wherein so many precautions of a long and preallable
conversation are required. This hath no other Idea than of itself, and can have
no reference but to itself. It is not one especial consideration, nor two, nor
three, nor four, nor a thousand: It is I wot not what kind of quintessence, of
all this commixture, which having seized all my will, induced the same to
plunge and lose itself in his, which likewise having seized all his will,
brought it to lose and
plunge itself in mine, with a mutual greediness, and with a
semblable concurrence. I may truly say, lose, reserving nothing Gracchus
unto us, that might properly be called our own, nor that was either and Blosius
his, or mine. When Lelius in the presence of the Roman Consuls,
who after the condemnation of Tiberius Gracchus, pursued all those that had
been of his acquaintance, came to enquire of Caius Blosius (who was one of
his chiefest friends) what he would have done for him, and that he answered,
All things. What? All things? replied he: And what if he had willed thee to
burn our Temples? Blosius answered, He would never have commanded such
a thing. But what if he had done it? replied Lelius: The other answered, I
would have obeyed him: If he were so perfect a friend to Gracchus, as
Histories report, he needed
not offend the Consuls with this last and bold confession, and
should not have departed from the assurance he had of Gracchus Gracchus
his mind. But yet those, who accuse this answer as seditious, and Blosius
understand not well this mystery: and do not presuppose in what
terms he stood, and that he held Gracchus his will in his sleeve, both by
power and knowledge. They were rather friends than Citizens, rather friends
than enemies of their country, or friends of ambition and trouble. Having
absolutely committed themselves one to another, they perfectly held the reins
of one another’s inclination: and let this yoke be guided by virtue and
conduct of reason (because without them it is altogether impossible to
combine and proportion the same). The answer of Blosius was such as it
should be. If their affections
miscarried, according to my meaning, they were neither friends one
to other, nor friends to themselves. As for the rest, this answer A
sounds no more than mine would do, to him that would in such sort friend’s will
enquire of me; if your will should command you to kill your
daughter, would you do it? and that I should consent unto it: for, that beareth
no witness of consent to do it: because I am not in doubt of my will, and as
little of such a friend’s will. It is not in the power of the world’s discourse to
remove me from the certainty I have of his intentions and judgements of
mine: no one of its actions might be presented unto me, under what shape
soever, but I would presently find the spring and motion of it. Our minds
have jumped so unitedly together, they have with so fervent an affection
considered
of each other, and with like affection so discovered and sounded,
even to the very bottom of each other’s heart and entrails, that I did Friends’
not only know his, as well as mine own, but I would (verily) rather affection
have trusted him concerning any matter of mine, than myself. Let no man
compare any of the other common friendships to this. I have as much
knowledge of them as another, yea of the perfectest of their kind: yet will I
not persuade any man to confound their rules, for so a man might be
deceived. In these other strict friendships a man must march with the bridle
of wisdom and precaution in his hand; the bond is not so strictly tied, but a
man may in some sort distrust the same. Love him (said Chilon) as if you
should one day hate him again. Hate him as if you should love him again.
This precept, so
abominable in this soveraign and mistress Amity, is necessary and
wholesome in the use of vulgar and customary friendships: toward Customary
which a man must employ the saying Aristotle was wont so often to friendships
repeat, Oh you my friends, there is no perfect friend.
In this noble commerce, offices and benefits (nurses of other amities)
deserve not so much as to be accounted of: this confusion so full of our wills
is cause of it: for even as the friendship I bear unto myself, admits no
accrease, by any succour I give myself in any time of need, whatsoever the
Stoics alleage; and as I acknowledge no thanks unto myself for any service I
do unto myself, so the union of such friends, being truly perfect, makes them
lose the feeling of such duties, and hate, and expel from one
another these words of division, and difference; benefit, good deed, Mutual
duty, obligation, acknowledgement, prayer, thanks, and such their agreement
like. All things being by effect common between them; wills,
thoughts, judgements, goods, wives, children, honour, and life; and their
mutual agreement, being no other than one soul in two bodies, according to
the fit definition of Aristotle, they can neither lend or give ought to each
other. See here the reason why Lawmakers, to honour marriage with some
imaginary resemblance of this divine bond, inhibit donations between
husband and wife; meaning thereby to infer, that all things should peculiarly
be proper to each of them, and that they have nothing to divide and share
together. If in the friendship whereof I speak, one might give unto
another, the receiver of the benefit should bind his fellow. For,
each seeking more than any other thing, to do each other good, he The
who yields both matter and occasion, is the man sheweth himself will of
Eudamidas
liberal, giving his friend that contentment, to effect towards him
what he desireth most. When the Philosopher Diogenes wanted money, he
was wont to say; That he re-demanded the same of his friends, and not that
he demanded it: And to show how that is practised by effect, I will relate an
ancient singular example. Eudamidas the Corinthian had two friends.
Charixenus a Sycionian, and Aretheus a Corinthian; being upon his death-
bed, and very poor, and his two friends very rich, thus made his last will and
testament. To Aretheus, I bequeath the keeping of my mother, and to maintain
 her when she shall be old: To Charixenus the marrying of my
daughter, and to give her as great a dowry as he may: and in case Aretheus
one of them shall chance to die before, I appoint the surviver to
substitute his charge, and supply his place. Those that first saw this
testament, laughed and mocked at the same; but his heirs being advertised
thereof, were very well pleased, and received it with singular contentment.
And Charixenus one of them, dying five days after Eudamidas, the
substitution being declared in favour of Aretheus, he carefully, and very
kindly kept and maintained his mother, and of five talents that he was worth,
he gave two and a half in marriage to one only daughter he had, and the other
two and a half to the daughter of Eudamidas, whom he married both in one
day. This
example is very ample, if one thing were not, which is the Divisions
multitude of friends: For this perfect amity I speak of is indivisible; of
each man doth so wholly give himself unto his friend, that he hath common friendships
nothing left him to divide elsewhere: moreover he is grieved that
he is [not] double, triple, or quadruple, and hath not many souls, or sundry
wills, that he might confer them all upon this subject. Common friendships
may be divided; a man may love beauty in one, facility of behaviour in
another, liberality in one, and wisdom in another, paternity in this, fraternity
in that man, and so forth: but this amity which possesseth the soul, and sways
it in all soveraignty, it is impossible it should be double. If two at one instant
should require help, to which would you run? Should they crave contrary
offices of you,
what order would you follow? Should one commit a matter to your
silence, which if the other knew would greatly profit him, what A
course would you take? Or how would you discharge yourself? A principal friendship
singular and principal friendship dissolveth all other duties, and
freeth all other obligations. The secret I have sworn not to reveal to another, I
may without perjury impart it unto him, who is no other but myself. It is a
great and strange wonder for a man to double himself; and those that talk of
tripling, know not, nor cannot reach unto the height of it. Nothing is extreme,
that hath his like. And he who shall presuppose, that of two I love the one as
well as the other, and that they inter-love one another, and love me as much
as I love them: he multiplieth in brotherhood,
a thing most singular, and a lonely one, and than which one alone
is also the rarest to be found in the world. The remainder of this The
history agreeth very well with what I said; for, Eudamidas giveth force of
friendship
as a grace and favour to his friends to employ them in his need: he
leaveth them as his heirs of his liberality, which consisteth in putting the
means into their hands, to do him good. And doubtless, the force of
friendship is much more richly shown in his deed, than in Aretheus. To
conclude, they are [inimaginable] effects, to him that hath not tasted them;
and which makes me wonderfully to honour the answer of that young Soldier
to Cyrus, who enquiring of him, what he would take for a horse, with which
he had lately gained the prize of a race, and whether he would change
him for a Kingdom? No, surely, my Liege (said he), yet would I
willingly forego him to gain a true friend, could I but find a man A
worthy of so precious an alliance. He said not ill, in saying, could I superficial
but find. For, a man shall easily find men fit for a superficial acquaintance
acquaintance; but in this, wherein men negotiate from the very
centre of their hearts, and make no spare of any thing, it is most requisite, all
the wards and springs be sincerely wrought, and perfectly true. In
confederacies, which hold but by one end, men have nothing to provide for,
but for the imperfections, which particularly do interest and concern that end
and respect. It is no great matter what religion my Physician and Lawyer is
of: this consideration hath nothing common with the offices of that friendship
they owe me.
So do I in the familiar acquaintances, that those who serve me
contract with me. I am nothing inquisitive whether a Lackey be Concerning
chaste or no, but whether he be diligent: I fear not a gaming table- talk
Muletier, so much as if he be weak; nor a hot swearing Cooke, as
one that is ignorant and unskilful; I never meddle with saying what a man
should do in the world; there are over many others that do it; but what myself
do in the world.
‘Mihi sic usus est: Tibi, ut opus est facto, face.’
TER., Heau. Act i. Scen. i. 28.

So is it requisite for me;

Do thou as needful is for thee.

Concerning familiar table-talk, I rather acquaint myself with, and follow a

merry conceited humour, than a wise man.... In society or conversation of
familiar discourse, I respect rather sufficiency,
though without Preud’hommie, and so of all things else. Even as he
that was found riding upon an hobby-horse, playing with his Friendship
children, besought him, who thus surprized him, not to speak of it, difficult
to find
until he were a father himself supposing the tender fondness, and
fatherly passion, which then would possess his mind, should make him an
impartial judge of such an action. So would I wish to speak to such as had
tried what I speak of: but knowing how far such an amity is from the
common use, and how seldom seen and rarely found, I look not to find a
competent judge. For, even the discourses, which stern antiquity hath left us
concerning this subject, seem to me but faint and forceless in respect of the
feeling I have of it: And in that point the effects exceed the very precepts of
Philosophy.
 ‘Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.’
HOR., i. Sat. v. 44.

For me, be I well in my wit,

Nought, as a merry friend, so fit.

Ancient Menander accounted him happy, that had but met the
shadow of a true friend: verily he had reason to say so, especially if The
shadow
he had tasted of any: for truly, if I compare all the rest of my of a
forepassed life, which although I have by the mere mercy of God, true
past at rest and ease, and except the loss of so dear a friend, free friend
from all grievous affliction, with an ever-quietness of mind, as one that have
taken my natural and original commodities in good payment, without
searching any others: if, as I say, I compare it all unto the four years, I so
happily enjoyed the sweet company, and dear-dear society of that worthy
man, it is
nought but a vapour, nought but a dark and irkesome [night]. Since
the time I lost him, Montaigne’s
friend
‘quem semper acerbum,
Semper honoratum (sic Dii voluistis) habebo.’
VIRG., Aen. v. 49.

Which I shall ever hold a bitter day,

Yet ever honor’d (so my God t’ obey).

I do but languish, I do but sorrow: and even those pleasures, all things
present me with, instead of yielding me comfort, do but redouble the grief of
his loss. We were co-partners in all things. All things were with us at half:
methinks I have stolen his part from him.
‘—Nec fas esse ulla me voluptate hîc frui
Decrevi, tantisper dum ille abest meus particeps.’
TER., Heau. Act i. Scen. i. 97.

I have set down, no joy enjoy I may,

As long as he my partner is away.

I was so accustomed to be ever two,

and so enured to be never single, that methinks I am but half Montaigne’s
myself. friend

‘Illam meæ si partem animæ tulit,

Maturior vis, quid moror altera,
Nec charus æque nec superstes,
Integer? Ille dies utramque
Duxit ruinam.’—HOR., ii. Od. xvii. 5.

Since that part of my soul riper fate reft me,

Why stay I here the other part he left me?
Nor so dear, nor entire, while here I rest:
That day hath in one ruin both opprest.

There is no action can betide me, or imagination possess me, but I hear
him saying, as indeed he would have done to me: for even as he did excel me
by an infinite distance in all other sufficiencies and virtues, so did he in all
offices and duties of friendship.
‘Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus,
Tam chari capitis?’—i. Od. xxiv. 1.

What modesty or measure may I bear,

In want and wish of him that was so dear?

‘O misero frater adempte mihi!

In
Omnia tecum unà perierunt gaudia nostra,
memoriam
Quæ tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor.
Tu mea, tu moriens fregisti commoda frater,
Tecum unà tota est nostra sepulta anima,
Cujus ego interitu tota de mente fugavi
Hæc studia, atque omnes delicias animi.
Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem?
Nunquam ego te vita frater amabilior,
Aspiciam posthac? at certè semper amabo.’
CATUL., Ele. iv. 20, 92, 23,
95, 21, 94, 25; El. i. 9.
 O brother reft from miserable me,
All our delight’s are perished with thee,
Which thy sweet love did nourish in my breath.
Thou all my good hast spoiled in thy death:
With thee my soul is all and whole enshrined,
At whose death I have cast out of mind
All my mind’s sweet-meats, studies of this kind;
Never shall I hear thee speak, speak with thee?
Thee, brother, than life dearer, never see?
Yet shalt thou ever be belov’d of me.

But let us a little hear this young man speak, being but sixteen years of age.
Because I have found this work to have since been published
(and to an ill end) by such as seek to trouble and subvert the state The
of our common-wealth, nor caring whether they shall reform it or author’s subject
no; which they have fondly inserted among other writings of their
invention, I have revoked my intent, which was to place it here. And lest the
Author’s memory should any way be interested with those that could not
thoroughly know his opinions and actions, they shall understand, that this
subject was by him treated of in his infancy, only by way of exercise, as a
subject, common, bare-worn, and wire-drawn in a thousand books. I will
never doubt but he believed what he writ, and writ as he thought: for he was
so conscientious, that no lie did ever pass his lips, yea, were it but in matters
of sport or play: and I know, that had it been in his choice, he
would rather have been born at Venice than at Sarlac; and good A good
reason why: But he had another maxim deeply imprinted in his citizen
mind, which was, carefully to obey, and religiously to submit himself to the
laws, under which he was born. There was never a better Citizen, nor more
affected to the welfare and quietness of his country, nor a sharper enemy of
the changes, innovations, new-fangles, and hurly-burlies of his time: He
would more willingly have employed the utmost of his endeavours to
extinguish and suppress, than to favour or further them: His mind was
modelled to the pattern of other best ages.
 XIII

IDEAL FRIENDSHIP
ANTHUSA TO ST. JOHN
 IDEAL FRIENDSHIP
TRULY faithful friend is the medicine of life; a truly faithful
A friend, a strong covering. For what would not a genuine Nothing
friend do? what pleasure would he not create for us? what comparable
profit? what safety? Though thou wert to name a thousand friend
to a real

treasures, there is nothing comparable to a real friend. And first let

us say how much pleasure friendship contains. The friend is bright with joy,
and overflows when he sees his friend. He is united to him according to an
union having a certain ineffable pleasure of the soul. But if he barely think of
him, he rises and is borne upwards in his mind. I speak of genuine friends,
who are of one accord, of those who would choose
to die for their friends, of those who love warmly. Do not imagine,
when you think of those who love lightly, and are sharers of your The
tables, and friends with whom you have a bowing acquaintance, grace imparted
that you can refute this saying of mine. If any one have a friend by
such as I mention, he will understand my words; and, though he friendship
should see his friend every day, he is not filled with seeing him. He
makes the same prayers for him as for himself. I know a certain man, who,
when asking the holy man, on behalf of his friend, asks him to pray first for
the friend and then for himself. A true friend is such that places and times are
loved on his account. For, as brilliant bodies shed a lustre upon the adjoining
places, even so friends impart their own grace to the places where they may
come. And oftentimes,
when standing in those places without our friends, we have wept
and groaned, remembering the days when we were there along with The
genuine
them. friend
It is not possible to set forth in language the pleasure which the
presence of friends causes, but those only having experience know. One can
ask a favour, and receive a favour, from a friend without suspicion. When
they lay a command upon us, we are grateful to them; but when they are slow
to ask, then we are sad. We have nothing which is not theirs. Often, though
despising all things here, nevertheless, on their account, we do not wish to
depart from hence; and they are more desirable to us than the light. And,
truly, indeed, a friend is more desirable than the light itself. I speak of the
genuine friend: and
do not wonder; for it were better for us that the sun were
extinguished, than to be deprived of friends. It were better to live in Spiritual
darkness, than to be without friends. And how do I say this? friends
Because many seeing the sun are in darkness. But those who are rich in
friends, could never be in tribulation. I speak of the spiritual friends who set
nothing above friendship. Such was Paul, who would willingly have given his
own soul, without having been asked, and would have willingly fallen into
Hell. With so burning an affection is it proper to love. I wish to give you an
example of friendship. Friends surpass fathers and sons, that is, friends
according to Christ.
Friendship is a great thing, and how great, no one could learn, nor could
any word explain, but only the experience of
itself. For this (the absence of love) has brought heresies, this
causes the heathens to be heathens. He who loves does not wish to Friendship
command nor to rule, but he feels more grateful, being subject, and athing great

being commanded; he wishes to confer favours rather than to

receive them, for he loves, and feels as if he had not gratified his desire. He is
not so much delighted at experiencing kindness as at doing kindness. For he
prefers to hold his friend bound to him, rather than he should be indebted to
his friend: or, rather, he wishes to be indebted to him, and also to have him as
a debtor. He wishes to confer favours upon, and not to seem to confer
favours, but to be his debtor.
When friendship does not exist, we upbraid with our services those whom
we serve, and we exaggerate small things.
But where friendship does exist, we both conceal the services,
and we wish to show great things as small, in order that we may Where
not seem to have our friend a debtor, but that we ourselves may friendshipexists
appear to be debtors to him while we actually have him our debtor.
I know that many do not understand what is said, but the reason is, that I
discourse of a thing which now inhabits Heaven. As if, therefore, I spoke of
some plant growing in India, of which no one had experience, language could
not represent it, although I were to say ten thousand things; even so, now,
whatever I may say, I shall speak in vain, for no one will be able to represent
it. This plant has been planted in Heaven, having its branches loaded, not
with pearls, but with excelling life, which is much more pleasing than those.
But what kind of
pleasure dost thou wish to speak of? Is it of disgraceful pleasure?
Or of virtuous pleasure? Now the pleasure of friendship exceeds all The
other pleasures, even though thou shouldst say that of honey. For true friend
this latter becomes mawkish, but a friend never, so long as he is a
friend; but his desire is rather increased, and this pleasure never admits of
satiety. A friend is sweeter than the present life. Therefore, many have not
wished to live any longer after the death of their friends. With a friend any
one could willingly endure banishment; but without a friend no one would
choose to inhabit even his own country. With a friend even poverty is
bearable, but without him health and wealth are unbearable. Such an one has
another self.
Nothing is the equal of concord, nor
of harmony. For one is thus equivalent to many. For, if two, or ten,
be unanimous, any one of them is no longer one, but each one of Nothing
them becomes of the value of ten; and you will find the one in the isequal the
of
ten, and the ten in the one. And if they have an enemy, attacking concord
not one, but ten, he is thus taken. For he is struck, not by one, but
by ten mouths. Has the one fallen into want? Still he is not in desolation; for
he abounds in his greater part; that is to say in the nine, and the needy part is
protected; that is, the smaller part by that which abounds. Each one of them
has twenty hands, and twenty eyes, and as many feet. For he sees not with his
own eyes alone, but with those of others; he walks not with his own feet, but
with those of others; he works not with his own hands, but with
those of others. He has ten souls, for he alone is not concerned
about himself, but those other nine souls are concerned about him. Charity
But if they be a hundred, the same thing will take place again, the awonderful
elements of power will be increased. Hast thou seen the excellence thing
of charity? How it causes one individual to be unconquerable and
equal to many. How the one person can be in different places. How the same
person may thus be in Persia and in Rome, and how what nature cannot do,
that, charity can do. For one part of the man will be there, and one part here;
or rather, he will be altogether there and altogether here. Or if he have a
thousand friends, or two thousand, think to what a pitch his power will
advance. Dost thou see how productive a thing is charity? For this is a
wonderful thing:
to make the individual a thousand-fold. For what reason, therefore,
do we not take possession of this strength, and place ourselves in An
safety? This is better than all power and virtue. This is more than argument
of joy
health, more than the light of day itself. This is an argument of joy.
How long shall we confine our love to one or two? Learn the thing from its
opposite.
Let there be any one, who has no friend—a thing which is of the utmost
folly. For the fool will say, I have no friend. What manner of life does such
an one live? For even if he be ten thousand times rich; even if he be in
abundance and luxury, and possessing ten thousand good things, he is
absolutely deserted and naked. But in the case of friends this is not so; but
even though they be poor, they are better provided
than the rich; and what a man will not venture to say for himself,
those things a friend will say for him. And the things which he is A
unable to grant to himself, those he can grant through another, and friend
the
many more things than those, and thus he will be to us a cause of cause
all pleasure and enjoyment. For it is impossible that he should of all
pleasure
suffer hurt, being protected by so many bodyguards, for neither are and
the bodyguards of the Emperor as careful as those; for the former enjoyment
perform their guard through necessity, but the latter through
kindness and love. But those things are much more commanding than fear.
And he indeed (the prince) fears his guards, but the friend trusts to them more
than to himself, and, through their means, fears none of those who plot
against him. Let us, therefore, procure
for ourselves this commodity—the poor man, that he may have a
consolation of his poverty; the rich man, in order that he may Solitude
possess his riches in safety; the ruler that he may rule with safety; to be
avoided
the subject, that he may have well-disposed rulers. This is an
occasion of benevolence; this is a cause of clemency. Since even amongst
beasts, those are the most savage and intractable which do not herd together;
for this reason we inhabit cities, and we hold markets, that we may have
intercourse with each other. This also Paul commanded, saying, ‘Not
forsaking our assembly.’ For there is nothing so bad as solitude, and the
absence of society and of access.
What, therefore, are the monks, some one says, and those who have taken
as their residence the tops of the mountains? Neither
are they without friends; but they have fled from the tumult of the
market-place, and have many of one accord with them, and strictly It is not
bound to each other. And it was in order that they might the place
accomplish this that they withdrew. For, inasmuch as the zeal of that
business begets many disputes, for this reason, having left the makes
the
world, they cultivate charity with much strictness. What, therefore, friend
he says, if a man be alone, may he also have innumerable friends?
I, indeed, would wish if it were possible that we were all able to live together;
but, in the meantime, let friendship remain unmoved. For it is not the place
that makes the friend. They, therefore, have many who admire them; but
those would not admire unless they loved. And they again (the monks) pray
for the entire world,
which is the greatest evidence of friendship. For this reason also in
the sacred mysteries, we embrace each other, in order that being The
many, we may become one. And we make common prayer for the greatest evidence
uninitiated, imploring for the sick and for the fruits of the world, of
and for the land, and for the sea. Dost thou see all the strength of friendship
charity, in the prayers, in the holy mysteries, in the admonitions?
This is the cause of all good things. If we apply, with due care, to those
admonitions, which shall both administer present things well, and shall obtain
the kingdom.
 XIV

THE BLESSINGS OF FRIENDSHIP

ARISTOTLE
 THE BLESSINGS OF FRIENDSHIP
RIENDSHIP, in the first place, is either itself a virtue, or
F connected with virtue; and next, it is a thing most necessary Friendship
for life, since no one would choose to live without friends, a virtue
though he should have all the other good things in the world: and, in
fact, men who are rich or possessed of authority and influence, are thought to
have special need of friends. For where is the use of such prosperity, if there
be taken away the doing of kindnesses, of which friends are the most usual
and most commendable objects? Or how can it be kept or preserved without
friends, because the greater it is, so much the more insecure and hazardous: in
poverty, moreover,
and all other adversities, men think friends to be their only refuge.
Furthermore, friendship helps the young to keep from error; the The bond of
old, in respect of attention and such deficiencies in action as their social
weakness makes them liable to; and those who are in their prime, communities
in respect of noble deeds; ‘they two together going,’ Homer says,
because they are thus more able to devise plans, and carry them out.
Friendship seems to be the bond of social communities, and legislators
seem to be more anxious to secure it than justice even. I mean, unanimity is
somewhat like to friendship, and this they certainly aim at, and specially
drive out faction as being inimical.
When people are in friendship, justice is not required; but, on the other
hand, though they are just, they need friendship in addition, and
that principle which is most truly just is thought to partake of the The
nature of friendship. Not only is it a thing necessary, but object of
honourable likewise, since we praise those who are fond of friends, friendship
and the having numerous friends is thought a matter of credit to a
man; some even go so far as to hold that a ‘good man’ and ‘friend’ are terms
synonymous.
Each individual feels friendship, not for what it is, but for that which
conveys to his mind the impression of being good to himself. But this will
make no real difference, because that which is truly the object of friendship,
will also convey this impression to his mind.
 There are three causes from which men feel friendship; but the term is not
applied to the case of fondness for things inanimate, because there
is no requital of the affection, nor desire for the good of these Friendship:
objects. As the motives to friendship differ in kind, so do the its several
respective feelings and friendships. Now they who have friendship motives
for one another desire one another’s good, according to the motive
of their friendship; accordingly, they whose motive is utility have no real
friendship for one another, but only in so far as some good arises to them
from one another. They whose motive is pleasure are in like case: I mean,
they have friendship for men of easy pleasantry, not because they are of a
given character, but because they are pleasant to themselves. So they whose
motive to friendship is utility, love their friends for what is good to
themselves; they whose motive is
pleasure, do so for what is pleasurable to themselves; that is to say,
not in so far as the friend beloved is, but in so far as he is useful or Friendship
pleasurable. These friendships then are a matter of result, since the among
the old
object is not beloved in that he is, but in that he furnishes
advantage or pleasure, as the case may be. Such friendships are very liable to
dissolution if the parties do not continue alike; when they are no longer
pleasurable or useful. It is the nature of utility not to be permanent, but
constantly varying; thus when the motive which made them friends is
vanished, the friendship likewise dissolves, since it existed only relatively to
those circumstances.
Friendship of this kind is thought to exist principally among the old,
because men at that time of life pursue, not what
is pleasurable, but what is profitable. They that are such have no
intimate intercourse, for sometimes they are not even pleasurable to The
one another. With these friendships is commonly ranked that of friendshipof the
hospitality. young
But the friendship of the young is thought to be based on the
motive of pleasure, because they live at the beck and call of passion, and
generally pursue what is pleasurable to themselves, and the object of the
present moment. Their age changes, so likewise their pleasures. This the
reason why they form and dissolve friendships rapidly, since the friendship
changes with the pleasurable object, and such pleasure changes quickly.
Perfect friendship subsists between those who are good, and whose
similarity consists in their goodness; for these
men wish one another’s good in similar ways, in so far as they are
good. And those are specially friends who wish good to their Perfect
friends for their sakes, because they feel thus towards them on their friendship
own account, and not as a mere matter of result. So the friendship between
these men continues to subsist so long as they are good, and goodness we
know has in it a principle of permanence. Each party is good abstractedly,
and also relatively to his friend, for all good men are not only abstractedly
good, but also useful to one another. Such friends are also mutually
pleasurable, because all good men are so abstractedly, and also relatively to
one another, inasmuch as to each individual these actions are pleasurable
which correspond to his nature, and all such as are like them.
Friendship under these circumstances is permanent, since it
combines in itself all the requisite qualifications of friends. Friendship
Friendship, of whatever kind, is based upon good or pleasure isupon based

(either abstractedly or relatively to the person entertaining the good or

sentiment of friendship), and results from a similarity of some sort; pleasure
and to this kind belong all the aforementioned requisites in the
friends themselves, because in this they are similar. In it there is abstractedly
good, and the abstractedly pleasant, and as these are specially the object-
matter of friendship, so the feeling and state of friendship is found most
intense and excellent in men thus qualified.
Rare it is probable friendships will be, because men of this kind are rare.
Besides, all requisite qualifications being
presupposed, there is farther required time and intimacy. They
cannot admit one another to intimacy, much less be friends, till The
each has appeared to the other and been proved to be a fit object of desire
for
friendship. They who speedily commence an interchange of friendship
friendly actions, may be said to wish to be friends, but they are not
so, unless they are also proper objects of friendship and mutually known to
be such. A desire for friendship may arise quickly, but not friendship itself.
This friendship is perfect both in respect of the time and in all other
points; and exactly the same and similar results accrue to each party from the
other, which ought to be the case between friends.
The friendship based upon the pleasurable is, so to say, a copy of this,
since the
good are sources of pleasure to one another; that based on utility
The
likewise, the good being also useful to one another. Between men most
thus connected, friendships are most permanent when the same permanent
result accrues to both from one another, pleasure for instance. And friendships
not merely so, but from the same source, as in the case of two men of easy
pleasantry; and not as it is in that of a lover and the object of his affection,
these not deriving their pleasure from the same causes, but the former from
seeing the latter, and the latter from receiving the attentions of the former.
When the bloom of youth fades the friendship sometimes ceases also,
because the lover derives no pleasure from seeing, and the object of his
affection ceases to receive the attentions which were paid before. In many
cases people
so connected continue friends, if being of similar tempers they
have come from custom to like one another’s dispositions. The
good
The good alone can be friends. The friendship of the good is alone
alone superior to calumny; it not being easy for men to believe a can be
third person respecting one whom they have long tried and proved. friends
There is between good men mutual confidence, and the feeling that one’s
friend would never have done one wrong, and all other such things as are
expected in friendship really worthy the name; but in the other kinds there is
nothing to prevent all such suspicions.
Distance has in itself no direct effect upon friendship, but only prevents
the acting it out. If the absence be protracted, it is thought to cause a
forgetfulness even of the friendship; and hence
it has been said, ‘Many and many a friendship hath want of
intercourse destroyed.’ Mutual
pleasures
Neither the old nor the morose appear to be calculated for of
friendship, because the pleasurableness in them is small, and no friends
one can spend his days in company with that which is positively
painful or even not pleasurable, since to avoid the painful and aim at the
pleasurable is one of the most obvious tendencies of human nature.
Those who get on with one another very fairly, but are not in habits of
intimacy, are rather like people having kindly feelings towards one another,
than friends. People cannot spend their time together unless they are mutually
pleasurable and take pleasure in the same objects, a quality which is thought
to appertain to the true friendship of companionship.
 A question is raised whether the happy man needs friends. It is
The
said that they who are blessed and independent have no need of greatest
friends, for they already have all that is good, and so, being of
independent, want nothing further. The notion of a friend’s office is external
goods
to be as it were a second self and procure for a man what he cannot
get by himself, hence the saying: ‘When Fortune gives us good, what need
we friends.’ On the other hand it looks absurd, while we are assigning to the
happy man all other good things, not to give him friends, which after all are
thought to be the greatest of external goods. It is nonsense to make our happy
man a solitary, because no man would choose the possession of all goods in
the world on the condition of solitariness, man being a social animal and
formed by
nature for living with others. The happy man has this qualification,
since he has all those things which are good by nature, and it is The
obvious that the society of friends and good men must be happy man
preferable to that of strangers and ordinary people, therefore the needs
happy man does need friends. friends

Are we to make our friends as numerous as possible? In respect of

acquaintance, it is thought to have been well said, ‘Have thou not many
acquaintances, yet be not without.’ In respect of friendship, may we not adopt
the precept, and say, that a man should not be without friends, nor, again,
have exceeding many friends? If they are more numerous than what will
suffice for one’s life they become officious, and are hindrances in respect of
living well.—We do not require them. Of those who are to be for pleasure, a
few are sufficient.
Perhaps it is well not to endeavour to have very many friends,
but so many as are enough for intimacy. It would seem not to be Famous
possible to be very much a friend to many at the same time, and for friendships
are
the same reason not to be in love with many objects at the same between
time. Love is a kind of excessive friendship, which implies but one two
persons
object, and all strong emotions must be limited in number towards
whom they are felt. Not many at a time become friends in the way of
companionship; all the famous friendships of the kind are between two
persons. They who have many friends, and meet everybody on footing of
intimacy, seem to be friends really to no one except in the way of general
society.
 Are friends most needed in prosperity or in adversity? They are required,
we know, in both states, because the unfortunate
need help, and the prosperous desire friends around them and to do
kindnesses to. The
presence
To have friends is more necessary in adversity, and therefore in of
this case useful ones are needed. To have them in prosperity is friends
more honourable, and this is why the prosperous want good men
for friends. The presence of friends is pleasant even in adversity, since men
when grieved are comforted by their sympathy.

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Table of Contents
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
I FRIENDSHIP RALPH WALDO EMERSON
FRIENDSHIP
II FRIENDS AND FRIENDSHIP HENRY D. THOREAU
FRIENDS & FRIENDSHIP
III THE SENTIMENT OF FRIENDSHIP THOMAS CARLYLE
THE SENTIMENT OF FRIENDSHIP
IV ON THE ACQUISITION OF FRIENDS HENRY MACKENZIE
ON THE ACQUISITION OF FRIENDS
V ON FRIENDSHIP OLIVER GOLDSMITH
ON FRIENDSHIP
VI THE PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
THE PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP
VII THE TRUE ART OF FRIENDSHIP SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
THE TRUE ART OF FRIENDSHIP
VIII THE VIRTUE OF FRIENDSHIP GEORGE BERKELEY
THE VIRTUE OF FRIENDSHIP
IX ON THE CHOICE OF FRIENDS SIR RICHARD STEELE
ON THE CHOICE OF FRIENDS
X THE QUALIFICATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP JOSEPH ADDISON
THE QUALIFICATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP
XI OF FRIENDSHIP FRANCIS BACON
OF FRIENDSHIP
XII OF FRIENDSHIP MICHAEL, LORD OF MONTAIGNE
XIII IDEAL FRIENDSHIP ANTHUSA TO ST. JOHN
IDEAL FRIENDSHIP
XIV THE BLESSINGS OF FRIENDSHIP ARISTOTLE
THE BLESSINGS OF FRIENDSHIP
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE