Friends.
In addition to that bond of a common humanity which ought to bind us to
all our fellow-men, there is a tie of special affinity between persons
of congenial tastes, kindred pursuits, common interests, and mutually
cherished ideals. Persons to whom we are drawn, and who are likewise
drawn to us, by these cords of subtle sympathy we call our friends.
Friendship is regard for what our friend is; not for what he can do for
us. "The perfect friendship," says Aristotle, "is that of good men who
resemble one another in virtue. For they both alike wish well to one
another as good men, and it is their essential character to be good men.
And those who wish well to their friends for the friends' sake are
friends in the truest sense; for they have these sentiments toward each
other as being what they are, and not in an accidental way; their
friendship, therefore, lasts as long as their virtue, and that is a
lasting thing. Such friendships are uncommon, for such people are rare.
Such friendship requires long and familiar intercourse. For they cannot
be friends till each show and approve himself to the other as worthy to
be loved. A wish to be friends may be of rapid growth, but not
friendship. Those whose love for one another is based on the useful, do
not love each other for what they are, but only in so far as each gets
some good from the other. These friendships are accidental; for the
object of affection is loved, not as being the person or character that
he is, but as the source of some good or some pleasure. Friendships of
this kind are easily dissolved, as the persons do not continue
unchanged; for if they cease to be useful or pleasant to one another,
their love ceases. On the disappearance of that which was the motive of
their friendship, their friendship itself is dissolved, since it existed
solely with a view to that. For pleasure then or profit it is possible
even for bad men to be friends with one another; but it is evident that
the friendship in which each loves the other for himself is only
possible between good men; for bad men take no delight in each other
unless some advantage is to be gained. The friendship whose motive is
utility is the friendship of sordid souls. Friendship lies more in
loving than in being loved; so that when people love each other in
proportion to their worth, they are lasting friends, and theirs is
lasting friendship."
THE DUTY.
+The interest of our friend should be our interest; his welfare, our
welfare; his wish, our will; his good, our aim.+--If he prospers we
rejoice; if he is overtaken by adversity, we must stand by him. If he is
in want, we must share our goods with him. If he is unpopular, we must
stand up for him. If he does wrong, we must be the first to tell him of
his fault: and the first to bear with him the penalty of his offense. If
he is unjustly accused we must believe in his innocence to the last.
Friends must have all things in common; not in the sense of legal
ownership, which would be impracticable, and, as Epicurus pointed out,
would imply mutual distrust; but in the sense of a willingness on the
part of each to do for the other all that is in his power. Only on the
high plane of such absolute, whole-souled devotion can pure friendship
be maintained.
THE VIRTUE.
+The true friend is one we can rely upon.+--Our deepest secrets, our
tenderest feelings, our frankest confessions, our inmost aspirations,
our most cherished plans, our most sacred ideals are as safe in his
keeping as in our own. Yes, they are safer; for the faithful friend will
not hesitate to prick the bubbles of our conceit; laugh us out of our
sentimentality; expose the root of selfishness beneath our virtuous
pretensions. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." To be sure the
friend must do all this with due delicacy and tact. If he takes
advantage of his position to exercise his censoriousness upon us we
speedily vote him a bore, and take measures to get rid of him. But when
done with gentleness and good nature, and with an eye single to our real
good, this pruning of the tendrils of our inner life is one of the most
precious offices of friendship.
THE REWARD.
+The chief blessing of friendship is the sense that we are not living
our lives and fighting our battles alone; but that our lives are linked
with the lives of others, and that the joys and sorrows of our united
lives are felt by hearts that beat as one.+--The seer who laid down so
severely the stern conditions which the highest friendship must fulfill,
has also sung its praises so sweetly, that his poem at the beginning of
his essay may serve as our description of the blessings which it is in
the power of friendship to confer:
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,--
Oh, friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red,
All things through thee take nobler form
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.
THE TEMPTATION.
+A relation so intimate as that of friendship offers constant
opportunity for betrayal.+--Friends understand each other perfectly.
Friend utters to friend many things which he would not for all the world
let others know. And more than that, the intimate association of
friendship cannot fail to give the friend an opportunity to perceive the
deep secrets of the other's heart which he would not speak even to a
friend, and which he has scarcely dared to acknowledge even to himself.
This intimate knowledge of another appeals strangely to our vanity and
pride; and we are often tempted to show it off by disclosing some of
these secrets which have been revealed to us in the confidence of
friendship. This is the meanest thing one person can do to another. The
person who yields to this basest of temptations is utterly unworthy ever
again to have a friend. Betrayal of friends is the unpardonable social
sin.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+We cannot find people who in every respect are exactly to our
liking.+--And, what is more to the point, we never can make ourselves
exactly what we should like to have other people intimately know and
understand. Friendship calls for courage enough to show ourselves in
spite of our frailties and imperfections; and to take others in spite of
the possible shortcomings which close acquaintance may reveal in them.
Friendship requires a readiness to give and take, for better or for
worse; and that exclusiveness which shrinks from the risks involved is
simply a combination of selfishness and cowardice. Refusal to make
friends is a sure sign that a man either is ashamed of himself, or else
lacks faith in his fellow-men. And these two states of mind are not so
different as they might at first appear. For we judge others chiefly by
ourselves. And the man who distrusts his fellow-men, generally bases his
distrust of them on the consciousness that he himself is not worthy of
the trust of others. So that the real root of exclusiveness is the dread
of letting other people get near to us, for fear of what they might
discover. Exclusiveness puts on the airs of pride. But pride is only a
game of bluff, by which a man who is ashamed to have other people get
near enough to see him as he is pretends that he is terribly afraid of
getting near enough to others to see what they are.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+Effusiveness.+--Some people can keep nothing to themselves. As soon as
they get an experience, or feel an emotion, or have an ache or pain,
they must straightway run and pour it into the ear of some sympathetic
listener. The result is that experiences do not gain sufficient hold
upon the nature to make any deep and lasting impression. No
independence, no self-reliance, no strength of character is developed.
Such people are superficial and unreal. They ask everything and have
nothing to give. The stream is so large and constant that there is
nothing left in the reservoir. Friendship must rest on solid
foundations of independence and mutual respect. With great clearness and
force Emerson proclaims this law in his Essay on Friendship: "We must be
our own before we can be another's. 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. 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. 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."
THE PENALTY.
+If we refuse to go in company there is nothing left for us but to
trudge along the dreary way alone.+--If we will not bear one another's
burdens, we must bear our own when they are heaviest in our unaided
strength; and fall beneath their weight. Here as everywhere penalty is
simply the inevitable consequence of conduct. The loveless heart is
doomed to drag out its term of years in the cheerless isolation of a
life from which the light of love has been withdrawn.