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06 - Friendship - Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson · Logic Library

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Friendship, a ruddy drop of manly blood. The surging sea outweighs the world,
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uncertain comes and goes, the lover rooted stays. I fancied, he
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was fled, and after many a year glowed unexhausted kindliness like daily sunrise.
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There my careful heart was free again, Oh friend, my bosom said,
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through thee alone. The sky is arched through thee, the rose is red.
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All thinks through thee. Take nobler form, and look beyond the earth.
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The mill round of our fate appears a sun path in thy worth.
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Me too. Thy nobleness has taught to master my despair. The fountains of
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my hidden life are through thy friendship. Fair, we have a great deal
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more kindness than is ever spoken. Muger all the selfishness that chills like east
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winds the world. The whole human family is bathed with an element of love,
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like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses whom we
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scarcely speak, to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us.
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How many we see in the street or sit with in church, whom,
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though silently we warmly rejoice to be with. Read the language of these wandering
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eye beams the heart knoweth. The effect of the indulgence of this human affection
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is certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry and in common speech, the emotions of
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benevolence and complacency which are felt towards others are likened to the material effects of
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fire. So swift more, much more, swift, more active, more
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cheering are these fine inward irradiations, from the highest degree of passionate love to
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the lowest degree of good will. They make the sweetness of life. Our
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intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The scholar sits down to write,
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and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought
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or happy expression. But it is necessary to write a letter to a friend,
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and forthwith troops of gentle thoughts, invest themselves on every hand with chosen
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words. See in any house where virtue and self respect abide, the palpitation
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which the approach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected and announced,
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and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain evades all the hearts of a household.
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His arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that would welcome him.
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The house is dusted, all things fly into their places. The old coade
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is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a dinner if they
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can. Of a commended stranger, only the good report is told by others.
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Only the good and new is heard by us. He stands to us
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for humanity. He is what we wish. Having imagined and invested him,
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we ask how we should stand related in conversation and action with such a man,
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and are uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts conversation with him.
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We talk better than we are wont We have the nimblest fancy, a richer
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memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time. For long
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hours, we can continue a series of sincere graceful, rich communications drawn from
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the oldest, secretest experience, so that they who sit by, of our
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own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprised at our unusual powers.
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But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions,
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his defects into the conversation, it is all over. He has heard the
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first, the last, and the best he will ever hear from us.
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He is no stranger now, vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension are old acquaintances.
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Now when he comes, he may get the order, the dress, and
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the dinner, But the throbbing of the hearts and the communications of the soul
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no more. What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a
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young world for me? Again? What so delicious? Has a just and
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firm encounter of two and a thought and a feeling? How beautiful on their
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approach to this beating art, the steps and forms of the gifted and the
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true. The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed. There
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is no winter and no night. All tragedies all on we vanish, all
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duties. Even nothing fills the preceding eternity, but the forms, all radiant
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of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it
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should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a
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thousand years. I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the
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old and the new. Shall I not call God the beautiful, who daily
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showeth himself so to me in his gifts. I chide society, I embrace
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solitude. And yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise,
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the lovely, and the noble minded, as from time to time they
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pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine a
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possession for all time. Nor is nature so poor, but she gives me
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this joy several times. And thus we weave social threads of our own,
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a new web of relations, and as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves,
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we shall buy and buy stand in a new world of our own creation,
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and no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My friends have come
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to me unsought. The Great God gave them to me by oldest rights,
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by the divine affinity of virtue with itself. I find them, or rather
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not I, but the Deity in me and in them, derides and cancels
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the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance at
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which he usually connives and now makes many one. I thanks, I owe
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you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and
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noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These are the
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new poetry of the first Bard poetry without stop him ode and epic poetry still
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flowing, Apollo in the muses, chanting. Still Will these two separate themselves
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from me again? Or some of them? I know not, but I
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fear it not, for my relation to them is so pure that we hold
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by simple affinity, and the genius of my life. Being thus social,
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the same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these men
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and women. Wherever I may be, I confess to an extreme tenderness of
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nature on this point. It is almost dangerous to me to crush the sweet
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poison of misused wine. Of the affections a new person is to me a
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great event, and hinders me from sleep. I have often had fine fancies
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about persons which have given me delicious hours. But the joy ends in the
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day. It yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it. My
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action is very little modified. I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as
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if they were mine, and a property. In his virtues, I feel
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as warmly when he is praised as the lover when hears applause of his engaged
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maiden. We overestimate the conscience of our friend, his goodness seems better than
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our goodness, his nature, finer, his temptations less, everything that is
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his, his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments.
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Fancy enhances our own thought, sounds new and larger from his mouth.
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Yet the cistole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the
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ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the soul,
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is too good to be believed. The lover beholding his maiden half knows that
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she is not verily that which he worships, And in the golden hour of
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friendship, we are surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that
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we bestow on our hero the virtues at which he shines, and afterwards worship
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the fourth which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul
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does not respect men as it respects itself. In strict science, all persons
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underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our
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love by mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I not
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be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall
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not fear to know them for what they are. Their essence is not less
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beautiful than their appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The
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root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and festoons
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we cut the stem short, and I must hazard the production of the bald
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fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an Egyptian scald our banquet.
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A man who stands united with this thought conceives magnificently of himself. He
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is conscious of a universal success, even though bought by uniform particular failures.
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No advantages, no all powers, no gold or force can be any match
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for him. I cannot choose but to rely on my own poverty more than
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on your wealth. I cannot make your consciousness tat about to mine. Only
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the star dazzles. The planet has a faint moonlike ray. I hear what
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you say of the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you praise.
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But I see well that for all his purple cloaks, I shall not like
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him unless he is at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny
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it, o friend, that the vast shadow of the phenomenal includes thee also
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in its pied and painted immensity, thee also compared with whom all else is
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shadow. Thou art not being as truth is as justice is. Thou art
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not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that thou hast come to
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me lately, and already thou art seizing thyak? Is it not that the
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soul puts forth friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by
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the germination of new buds extrudes the old leaf, the law of nature is
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altered nation forevermore, Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself
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with friends that it may enter into a grander self acquaintance or solitude, and
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it goes alone for a season that it may exalt its conversation or society.
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This method betrays itself along the whole history of our personal relations. The instinct
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of affection revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense
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of insolation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his life in
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the search after friendship. And if he should record his true sentiment, he
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might write a letter like this to each new candidate for his love. Dear
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friend, if I was sure of THEE, sure of thy capacity, sure
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to match my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles in
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relation to thy comings and goings. I am not very wise. My moods
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are quite attainable, and I respect thy genius. It is to me as
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yet unfathomed. Yet, dare I not presume in THEE a perfect intelligence of
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me? And so thou art to me a delicious torment thine ever or never?
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Yet? These uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for the curiosity and not
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for life. They are not to be indulged. This is to weave cobweb
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and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions because we have
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made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber of the
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human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web
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with the laws of nature and of But we have aimed at a swift and
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petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit
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in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.
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We seek our friend, not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which
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would appropriate him to ourselves in vain. We are harmed all over with subtle
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antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play and translate
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all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association
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must be a compromise. And what is worst? The very flower and aroma
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of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other.
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What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted,
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after interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently
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by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and
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of animal spirits. In the heyday of friendship and thought, our faculties do
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not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude. I ought
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to be equal to every relation. It makes no difference how many friends I
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have and what content I can find in conversing with each. If there be
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one to whom I am not equal, if I have shrunk unequal from one
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contest, the joy I find in all the rest becomes mean and cowardly.
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I should hate myself if then I made my other friends my asylum. The
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valiant warrior, famous for fights after a hundred victories, once foiled, is
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from the book of Honor, raised quiet, and all the rest forgot for
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which he toiled. Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and appeny are
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a tough husk in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening. It
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would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet
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ripe enough to know and own it respect. Then her lungzhamkites, which hardens
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the ruby in a million years, and works in duration in which alps and
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andes come and go as rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no
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heaven, which is the price of rashness. Love, which is the essence
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of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.
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Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, but the austerest
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worth. Let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of
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his heart, in the breadth impossible to be overturned of his foundations. The
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attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, And I leave for the
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time all account of subordinate social benefit to speak of that select and sacred relation,
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which is a kind of absolute, and which even leaves the language of
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love suspicious and common. So much is this purer, and nothing is so
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much divine. I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest
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courage. When they are real. They are not glass threads or frost work,
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but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages
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of experience, what do we know of nature or of ourselves? Not one
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step has man taken towards the solution of the problem of his destiny. In
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one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity
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of joy and peace, which I draw from misalliance with my brother's soul,
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is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk,
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and shall happy is the house that shelters a friend. It might well
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be built like a festal bower or arch to entertain him a single day happier
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if he know the solemnity of that relation and honor its law. He who
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offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up like an olympian to the great
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Games, where the first board of the world are the competitors. He proposes
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himself for contests where time, want, danger are in the lists, and
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he alone is victor, who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the
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delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts
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of fortune may be present or absence, but all the speed in that contest
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depends on intrinsic nobleness and the contempt of trifles. There are two elements that
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go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no
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superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is
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truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. For
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him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence
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of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments
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of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought which men never put off, and
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may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets
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another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority only to the
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highest rank that being permitted to speak truth as having none above it to courts
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or conform unto every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second
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person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow men
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by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up
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our thought from him under a hundred folds. I k you a man who,
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under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting
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all compliments and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered,
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and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and
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all men agreed he was mad, but persisting, as indeed he could not
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help doing. For some time in this course he attained to the advantage of
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bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would
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think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat
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of markets or reading rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity
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to the like plain dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry,
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what symbol of truth? He had? He did certainly show him. But
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to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side
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and its back to stand in true relations with men in a false age is
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worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect.
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Almost every man we meet requires some civility, requires to be humored.
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He has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in
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his head. That is not to be questioned man which spoils all conversation with
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him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity but
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me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part.
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A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature, I who
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alone am, I who see nothing in nature, whose existence I can affirm
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with equal evidence to my own. Behold now the semblance of my being,
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in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form,
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so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. The
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other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holding to men by everyvery sort
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of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope,
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by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance
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and badge, and trifle. But we can scarce believe that so much character
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can subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another be so
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blessed and we so pure, that we can offer him tenderness when a man
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becomes dear to me, I have touched the goal of fortune. I find
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very little written directly to the heart of this matter in books, and yet
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I have one text which I cannot choose. But remember my author says,
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I offer myself faintly and bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and tender
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myself least to him to whom I am the most devoted. I wish that
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friendship should have feet as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself
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on the ground before it vaults over the moon. I wish it to be
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a little of a citizen before it is quite a cherub. We chide the
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citizen because he makes love a commodity. It is an exchange of gifts of
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useful loans. It is a good neighborhood. It watches with the sick,
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it holds the pall at the funeral, and quite loses sight of the delicacies
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and nobility of the relation. But though we cannot find the God under this
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disguise of a sutler. Yet on the other hand, we cannot forgive the
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poet if he spins his thread too fine and does not substantiate his romance by
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the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity, and pity. I hate
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the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I
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much prefer the company of plowboys and tin peddlers to the silken and perfumed amity,
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which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in
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a curical and dinners of the best taverns. The end of friendship is a
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commerce, the most strict and homely that can be joined, more strict than
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any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all
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the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days
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and graceful gifts and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare,
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shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of
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the wits and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other
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the daily needs and offices of man's life and embellish it by courage, wisdom,
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and unity. It should never fall into something usual and settled, but
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should be alert and inventive, and add rime and reason to what was drudgery.
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Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, each so
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well tempered, and so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced. For even
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in that particular, a poet says, love demands that the parties be altogether
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paired, that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. It cannot subsist in
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its perfection, say some of those who are learned in this warm glow of
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the heart betwixt more than two. I am not quite so strict in my
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terms, perhaps because I have never known so high a friendship as others.
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I please my imagination more with a circle of godlike men and women, variously
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related to each other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I
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find this law of one to one peremptory for a conversation, which is the
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practice and consumation of friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The best
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mix is ill as good and bad. You shall have very useful and cheering
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discourse at several times with two several men. But let all three of you
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come together, and you shall not have one new and hearty word. Two
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may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation
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of the most sincere and searching sort. In good company. There is never
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such discourse between two across the table as takes place when you leave them alone.
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In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly
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co extensive with the several consciousnesses. There present no partialities of friend to fend,
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No fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband are their pertinent.
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But quite otherwise. Only he may then speak, who can sail on
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the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own.
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Now, this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of
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great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one. No,
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two men, but being left alone with each other, enter into simpler
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relations. Yet it is affinity that determines which too shall converse. Unrelated men
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give little joy to each other, will never suspect the latent powers of each.
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We talk sometimes of a great talent for conversation, as if it were
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a permanent property. In some individuals, conversation is an evanescent relation. No
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more a man is reputed to have thought and eloquence, he cannot, for
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all that say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his
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silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in
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the shade in the sun. It will mark the hour. Among those who
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enjoy his thoughts, he will regain his tongue. Friendship requires that rare mean
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betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each other with the presence of power and
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of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of
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the world, rather than that my friend should overstep by a word or life,
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his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance.
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Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have
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in his being mind is that the not mine is mine. I hate where
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I look for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to
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find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your
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friend. Than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to
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do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must
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be very two before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance
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of two large formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared before. Yet they
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recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them. He only is fit
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for this society, he who is magnanimous, who is sure that greatness and
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goodness are always economy, who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes.
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Let him not inter meddle with this. Leave to the diamond its ages to
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grow, nor expect to accelerate the birth of the eternal. Friendship demands a
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religious treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self elected.
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Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle.
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Of course, he has merits that are not yours, and that you
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cannot honor. If you must needs, hold him close to your person,
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stand aside, give those merits room, let them mount and expand. Are
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you the friend of your friend's buttons or of his thought? To a great
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heart? He will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars that he may
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come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard
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a friend as property and a short and all confounding pleasure instead of the noblest
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benefit. Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation.
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Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist
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on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or
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know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your
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own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing.
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Let him be to me a spirit, a message or thought, a
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sincerity, a glance from him I want, but not news nor pottage.
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I can get politics and chat and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not
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the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and
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great as nature itself ought? I to feel that our tie is profane in
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comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump
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of waving grass that divides the brook. Let us not vilify, but raise
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it to that standard, that great, defying eye that scornful beauty of his
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mien and action. Do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and
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enhance worship his superiorities. Wish him not less by our thoughts, but hold
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and tell them all guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee
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for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not
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a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The hues of the
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opal, the light of the diamond are not to be seen if the eye
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is too near to my friend. I write a letter, and from him
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I receive a letter that seems to you a little. It suffices me.
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It is a spiritual gift, worthy of him to give and of me to
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receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines, the heart will trust
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itself as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of
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a godlier existence than all the annals of heroism have yet made. Good respect
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so far the holy laws of this fellowship, as not to prejudice its perfect
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flower by your patience for its opening. We must be our own before we
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can be another's. There is at least this satisfaction in crime. According to
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the Latin proverb, you can speak to your accomplice on even terms creemen cous
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in quinnat equat, to those whom we admire and love at first, we
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cannot yet the least defect of self possession vitiates, in my judgment, the
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entire relation. There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual
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respect, until in their dialogue each stands for the whole world. What is
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so great as friendship? Let us carry with what grandeer spirit we can.
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Let us be silent so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let
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us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to
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the select souls, or how to say anything to such, No matter how
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ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly
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and wisdom, And for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait
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and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you,
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until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue
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is virtue. The only way to have a friend is to be one.
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You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house, if unlike
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his soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall never catch a
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true glance of his eye. We see that noble afar off, and they
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repel us. Why should we intrude? Late? Very late? We perceive
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that no arrangements, no introductions, nonconsuitudes, or habits of society, would
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be of any avail to establish us in such relations with them as we desire,
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but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it is
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in them. Then shall we meet as water with water. And if we
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should not meet them, then we shall not want them, for we are
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already they. In the last analysis, love is the only reflection of a
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man's own worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends,
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as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.
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The higher the style we demand our friendship, of course, the less
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easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world.
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Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope
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cheers ever the faithful heart that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power,
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souls are now acting, enduring and daring which can love us, and
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which we can love, we may congratulate ourselves at the period of knowledge of
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follies, of blunders, and of shame is past in solitude, and when
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we are finished men, we shall grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. Only
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be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with
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cheap persons where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and
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foolish alliances, which no God intends. By persisting in your path, though
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you forfeit the little, you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself so as
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to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to
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you the first born of the world, those rare pilgrims, whereof only one
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or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show
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as specters and shadows. Merely, it is foolish to be afraid of making
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our ties too spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love.
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Whatever correction of our popular views we make from insight, Nature will be sure
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to bear us out in and though it seemed to rob us of some joy,
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will repay us with a greater Let us feel if we will be absolute
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insolation of man, we are sure that we have all in us. We
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go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we read books in the
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instinctive faith that these will call it out and reveal us to ourselves beggars,
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or the persons are such as we the europe An old fabled garment of dead
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persons, the books their ghosts. Let us drop this idolatry. Let us
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give over this mendicancy. Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell and defy
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them, saying, who are you unhand me? I will be dependent no
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more. Ah seest thou not o brother, that thus we part only to
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meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each others because we
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are more our own. A friend is janice faced. He looks to the
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past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours,
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the profit of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend.
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I do then with my friends, as I do with my books. I
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would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.
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We must have society on our own terms, and admit or exclude it on
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the slightest cause I cannot afford to speak much after my friend. If he
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is great, he makes me so great that I cannot send a converse.
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In the great days, presentiments hover before me in the firmament. I ought
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then to dedicate myself to them. I go in that I may seize them.
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I go out that I may seize them. I fear only that I
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may lose them, receding into the sky in which now they are only a
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patch of brighter light. Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot
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afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own.
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It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking,
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this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm
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sympathies with you. But then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing
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of my mighty gods. It is true. Next week I shall have languid
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moods, when I can well afford to occupy myself with foreign objects. Then
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I shall regret the lost literature of your mind, and which you were by
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my side again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind
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only with new visions, not with yourself, but with your lusters, and
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I shall not be able any more than now to converse with you. So
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I will owe to my friends this evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them
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not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me that
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which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall
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not hold me by any relations less subtle and pure. We will meet as
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though we met not, and part as though we parted not. It has
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seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly
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on one side without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself
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with regrets that the receiver is not capacious. It never troubles the Sun that
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some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, only a small
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part on the reflecting planet. Let your Greatness educate the crude and cold companion.
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If he is unequal, he will presently pass away. But thou art
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enlarged by thy own shining, and no longer a mate for frogs and worms,
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dust, soar and burn with the gods of the Empyrean. It is
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thought a disgrace to love unrequited, But the Great will see that true love
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cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods
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on the eternal. And when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not
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sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the
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surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to
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the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.
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It must not surmise or provide for infer It treats its object as a
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god, that it may deify both and of friendship