Though Nature maintains, and must prevail, there will always be plenty
of people, and good people, who cannot, or think they cannot, see
anything in that last, wisest, most envelop'd of proverbs, "Friendship
rules the World." Modern society, in its largest vein, is essentially
intellectual, infidelistic--secretly admires, and depends most on,
pure compulsion or science, its rule and sovereignty--is, in short, in
"cultivated" quarters, deeply Napoleonic.
"Friendship," said Bonaparte, in one of his lightning-flashes of
candid garrulity, "Friendship is but a name. I love no one--not even my
brothers; Joseph perhaps a little. Still, if I do love him, it is from
habit, because he is the eldest of us. Duroc? Ay, him, if any one,
I love in a sort--but why? He suits me; he is cool, undemonstrative,
unfeeling--has no weak affections--never embraces any one--never weeps."
I am not sure but the same analogy is to be applied, in cases, often
seen, where, with an extra development and acuteness of the intellectual
faculties, there is a mark'd absence of the spiritual, affectional, and
sometimes, though more rarely, the highest esthetic and moral elements
of cognition.