FRIENDSHIP.
A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.
Philosophers of the utilitarian school have begun to reëstablish the
long-forgotten truth that Materialism is the indispensable root of the
plant which bears its flowers in spiritual aspirations. The consequence
of universal practice is the best test of a dogma, and if all men were
to divest themselves of their earthly possessions and devote their
lives to the hyperphysical vagaries of the Galilean messiah, there
would soon be neither crops to harvest nor bread to eat, and unworldly
saints would starve as surely as ungodly sinners. “Ideality” may be the
crown of the brain, as the brain is of the body, but the organs of the
mind cannot dispense with the aid of the alimentary organs; the
pinnacle of the social fabric needs intermediate supports. Education
has to secure the welfare of the body before it can successfully
cultivate the faculties of the mind; and it is not less certain that a
man has to be a good patriot before he can be a worthy cosmopolitan,
and a good friend before he can be a good patriot.
In the progress of individual development the instinct of friendship
asserts itself at a very early period. Its recollection hallows the
memory of the poorest childhood. The shepherd-boys of the upper Alps
travel dozens of miles over cliffs and rocks to meet their friends at a
salt-spring; on the shores of the Baltic the boys of the lonely
fishermen’s cabins frequent their trysting-places in spite of wind and
weather. Early friendships throw the charm of their poetry even over
the dreary prosa of grammar-school life; the fellowship of
school-friends forever endears the scenes of their sports and rambles,
and for many a poor office-drudge the recollection of such hours “holds
all the light that shone on the earth for him.” True friendship
smoothens the rough path of poverty, while friendlessness, even in the
gilded halls of wealth, is almost a synonyme of cheerlessness:
Ich wüsste mir keine grössre Pein,
Als wär’ ich im Paradies allein,
says Goethe. “To be alone in paradise would be the height of misery.”
Friendship will assert itself athwart the barriers of social
inequality, and its germs are so deeply rooted in the instincts of
primitive nature that, in default of a communion of kindred souls, the
bonds of sympathy have often united saints and sinners, nay, even men
and brutes. The traditions of Grecian antiquity have preserved the
possibly apocryphal legend of a dolphin that became attached to the
company of a young fisherman, and after his death left the sea in
search of its friend, and thus perished; but the story of Androcles was
confirmed by the experience of Chevalier Geoffroy de la Tour, a
crusader of the thirteenth century, who was charmed, but finally
distressed, by the affection of a pet lion that followed him like his
shadow, and at last fell a victim to his attachment by trying to swim
after the ship that conveyed his master from Damascus to Genoa. The
traveler Busbequius mentions a lynx that set his heart on escorting a
camp-follower of a Turkish pasha; and Sir Walter Scott vouches for the
touching episode of the Grampian Highlands, where a young hunter met
his death by falling from a steep cliff, and was found, months after,
half covered by the body of his favorite deerhound, who had followed
his friend to the happy hunting-grounds by starving to death at the
feet of a corpse.
Among the ancestors of the Mediterranean nations the betrayal of a
friend was deemed an act of almost inconceivable infamy; friends and
friends engaged in a pledge of mutual hospitality, which was held
sacred even in times of war; and among the natives of the South Sea
Islands a similar brotherhood of elective affinities existed in the
society of the Aroyi, or oath-friends, who held all property in common,
and in times of danger unhesitatingly risked their own lives in defense
of their ally’s. Professor Letourneau has collected many curious
anecdotes of that devotion, which should leave no doubt that altruism
in its noblest form can dispense with the hope of post-mortem
compensation, and, indeed, with all theological motives whatever.
B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
Unselfishness is the soul of true friendship, yet it nevertheless
remains true that all instincts are founded on the experience of
benefits or injuries. During the rough transition period from beasthood
to manhood, when our uncivilized ancestors roamed the forests of the
foreworld, it must have been an incalculable advantage to the
individual hunter or herder to secure the coöperation of a trusty
companion, whose watchful eye would double his chance of finding food
or avoiding danger, whose stout arm might parry a blow which unaided
strength would have failed to avert. As in other circumstances of
natural selection, those who most successfully availed themselves of
such advantages had a superior chance of survival and consequently of
transmitting their disposition to subsequent generations, and the habit
of friendship thus became a hereditary instinct.
The social system of civilized life has since devised manifold
substitutes for the coöperation of elective affinities, but various
unalienable advantages of the primitive plan have been more or less
clearly recognized by all nations, especially by the manful and
nature-abiding nations of pagan antiquity. The benefits secured by the
mutual aid of sympathizing friends are not limited to the guarantee of
civil rights, but extend to the realization of individual hopes and the
indulgence of personal inclination and predilections, as well as to the
higher privileges of a mental communion for which the panders of
selfish wealth have as yet devised no equivalent. The power of
approbativeness, the main stimulus of ambition, is infinitely
intensified by the emulation of noble friendship, which, in the words
of an ancient philosopher, “inspires to deeds heroic, and makes labor
worth the toils that lead to success.” Such friendship inspired the
heroism of Theseus and Pyrithous, of Harmodius and Aristogiton, of
Nisus and Euryalus, and recorded its experience in proverbs which have
few parallels in the languages of the Christianized nations: “Solem e
mundo qui amicitiam e vita tollunt”—“They deprive the world of sunshine
who deprive life of friendship.” “Amicum perdere damnorum est
maximum”—“To lose a friend is the greatest of losses.” “Amicus magis
necessarius quam ignis aut aqua”—“A friend is more needful than fire or
water.”
In times of tribulation, when the fury of party-strife overrode all
other restraints, friendship has more than once proved its saving power
by averting otherwise hopeless perils. Diagoras was thus saved from the
rage of allied bigots, Demetrius from the dagger of a wily assassin,
the elder Cato from the rancor of political rivals. Without the aid of
a friend Cicero would never have survived the intrigues of Catiline.
Epaminondas made the approval of friends the sole reward of his heroic
life, and vanquished the enemies of his country by the enthusiasm of
the “sacred legion” of mutually devoted and mutually inspiring friends.
Mohammed the Second yielded to the prayer of a humble companion what he
refused to the united threats of foreign embassadors, and Simon
Bolivar, the liberator of South America, often confessed that he owed
his triumphs to the counsel of private friends rather than to the
suggestions of his official advisers.
C.—PERVERSION.
The blessing of friendship, “doubling the joys of life and lessening
its sorrows,” could not fail to be specially obnoxious to the moralists
of a creed that seeks to lure its converts from earth to ghostland, and
depreciates the natural affections of the human heart. The gloomy
antinaturalism of the Galilean prophet has been glossed over by the
whitewashing committee of the revised Bible, but is too shockingly
evident in the less sophisticated version of the original text to
mistake its identity with the moral nihilism of the world-renouncing
Buddha. The phil’adelphia, or “brother-love,” of the New Testament, is,
in fact, merely a “fellowship in Christ”—the spiritual communion and
mutual indoctrination of earth-renouncing bigots. With the joys and
sorrows of natural friendship their prophet evinces no sympathy
whatever. “I am come,” says he, “to set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her mother, ... and a man’s foes shall
be those of his own household.” “He who hates not his father and
mother, his brothers and sisters, cannot be my disciple.” “And the
brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son.”
By that test of moral merit the obligation of natural affection counted
as nothing compared with the duty of theological conformity. “Verily, I
say unto you, there is no man that has left brethren or sisters or
father and mother for my sake and the gospels’, but he shall receive a
hundredfold,” etc. “He that loveth father and mother more than me is
not worthy of me.” “And another of his disciples said unto him: Lord,
suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him:
Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” “For if you love them
which love you, what reward have ye?”
D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.
The conversion of Rome, which theologians are fond of representing as
the crowning miracle of Christianity, was a natural consequence of its
pessimistic tendencies, which could not fail to recommend themselves to
the instincts of a decrepit generation. “Worn-out sensualists consoled
themselves with the hope of a better hereafter. Cowards pleased
themselves with the idea of fulfilling the duty of meek submission to
the injustice of the ‘powers that be.’ Monastic drones denounced the
worldliness of industrial enterprises. Physical indolence welcomed the
discovery that ‘bodily exercise profiteth but little.’ Envious
impotence insisted on the duty of self-abasement. Transgressors against
the health-laws of Nature relied upon the efficacy of the prayer-cure.
Stall-fed priests sneered at the lean philosopher who wasted his time
upon laborious inquiries, while he might wax fat on faith and the
sacrifices of the pious. The demon-dogma was a godsend to the spiritual
poverty of the elect. The so-called scholars of the Galilean church,
who could not encounter the pagan philosophers on their own ground,
found it very convenient to postulate a spook for every unknown
phenomenon.... Despots before long recognized the mistake of
persecuting a creed which inculcated the duty of passive submission to
oppressors” (Secret of the East, p. 54).
They also recognized the advantage of a spiritual excuse for the infamy
of their ingratitude to the secular benefactors of mankind. Cæsar and
Trajan treated the humblest centurion as a friend rather than as a
servant. Constantine and Justinian treated the ablest ministers like
slaves who can be forced to toil, and turned out to starve after having
worn out their strength in the service of the Lord’s anointed.
Belisarius, after repeatedly saving his master from well-deserved ruin,
was sacrificed to the spite of a crowned harlot, and left to beg his
bread in the streets of the city which his valor alone had for years
protected from the rage of hostile armies. Aetius, who had saved all
Europe by stemming the torrent of Hunnish conquest, was treated like a
rebellious slave for refusing to betray his brave allies, and the
stipulated pay of his veterans was squandered on pimps and clerical
parasites. Charles Martel, whose heroism turned the scales against the
power of the invading Moriscos, was openly reviled by the very priests
who owed him the preservation of their lives, as well as of their
livings; his image was dragged in the mire, his soul consigned to the
pit of torment—all for having defrayed the costs of his campaign by
tithing prelates as well as laymen. Columbus was loaded with chains by
the pious prince whose castles he had filled with the treasures of a
new world; the philosopher Vanini was betrayed to death by a Christian
spy who had for years enjoyed his confidence and his hospitality. John
Huss was surrendered by the imperial priest-slave whose own hand had
signed the document of his safe-conduct. The earl of Stafford was
sacrificed by the crowned Jesuit who divided his time between prayers
for the theological interests of his subjects and plots for the
subversion of their political liberties. The dogma of self-denial has
not prevented our financial pharisees from amassing fortunes that would
dwarf the spoils of a Roman triumphator; but the hospitality of Mæcenas
has not survived the religion of Nature. Our philosophers have to study
the problems of life in a personal struggle for existence; our poets
have to choose between starvation and hypocrisy. Patriots are left to
the consoling reflection that virtue is its own reward. The endowers of
theological seminaries seem to rely on the mercy of Christ to cancel
the odium of their shortcomings in the recognition of secular merit.
Kepler, Campanella, and Spinoza perished in penury. Locke and Rousseau,
the recognized primates of the intellectual world, were left to
languish in exile, admired and neglected by a host of
“friends”—Christian friends—in every city of the civilized world.
Schubert, Buerger, and Frederick Schiller, the idols of a poetry-loving
nation, were left to fight the bitter struggle for existence to an
extreme of which all the records of pagan antiquity furnish only a
single parallel. Anaxagoras, the founder of a philosophic school
counting its disciples by thousands, was left to languish in exile,
till the rumor of his extreme distress brought the most illustrious of
those disciples to the sick-bed of his neglected teacher. “Do not, do
not leave us!” he cried, in an agony of remorse; “we cannot afford to
lose the light of our life!”
“O Pericles,” said the dying exile, “those who need a lamp should take
care to supply it with oil!”
But how many lights of our latter-day lives have thus been extinguished
before their time! Not one of the plethoric British aristocrats who
spiced their leisure with the sweets of poetry ever dreamed of
relieving the cruel distress of Robert Burns, or of cutting the knot of
the financial embroglio that strangled out the life of Sir Walter
Scott.
E.—REFORM.
Time is the test of truth; and the fallacies of the “Brotherhood in
Christ” plan have been abundantly demonstrated by their consequences.
Instead of being a bond of union, the doctrine of renunciation has been
found to be a root of discord and rancor, and in times of need the
fellowship of its converts has proved a most rotten staff. Even the
wretches who betrayed their friends to the spies of the Holy
Inquisition had no difficulty in palliating the infamy of their conduct
with the sanction of scriptural precepts. For centuries the appeals of
martyrs to the cause of freedom and Freethought have been answered with
the advice of Christian submission to the “powers that be,” and our
modern pharisees rarely fail to reprove the “worldliness” of a poor
neighbor’s lament for the loss of his earthly possessions.
The founder of “Positivism,” the Religion of Humanity, proposes to
dedicate the days of the year to the leaders of progress, and inscribe
our places of worship with the names of discoverers, reformers, and
philosophers rather than of bigots and world-despising saints. And for
the sake of those who would not wish to repeat the mistake of
sacrificing the present to the past, the builders of those sanctuaries
should add a temple of Friendship. From the adoration of self-torturing
fanatics, from the worship of sorrow and the love of enemies, mankind
will at last revert to the ancestral plan of elective affinities, and
the dread of preferring natural to theological duties will not much
longer prevent our fellow-men from recognizing their obligations to
their earthly benefactors.