Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, each so
well tempered and so happily adapted, and withal so 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 good and bad. You shall have very useful and cheering
discourse at 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....
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 shade. In the sun
it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his 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. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There
must be 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 recognize 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 not yours, and that you cannot honor if you must
needs hold him 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 still 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 such 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 own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this
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 neighborly 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 them all. Let him
be to thee forever 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....
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 ourselves that
the period of nonage, of follies, of blunders and of 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.