The only way to have a friend is to be one.
—EMERSON
Emerson seems to have been nettled into writing his essay, “Friendship.” Certainly, he had friends enough, but Emerson was also known somewhat as a private person, almost hermit. At least, that is how some critics have described him. His essay may even be a self-defense. There are a number of passages which read almost as if the words were part of a quieter personal conversation, a conversation involving himself and a small, intimate circle of friends. Indeed, his essay even includes a letter to a friend.
I
first read Emerson as a young man in my early twenties, and this particular
essay stayed with me through my years. I was surprised and delighted at
the contents. And now, somehow the suggestion of Friendship, Maine, has
nettled me into looking once again at some of Emerson’s thoughts
and words.
Here, then, is a truncated version of Emerson’s essay, and an accompanying commentary. It is best, of course, that Emerson make his own points. I, on the other hand, will try to be as unobtrusive as possible, offering only the most abbreviated of comments. Here, then, is an abbreviated look at Emerson’s essay, “Friendship”—
Friendship itself seems to be a natural gift. We live in a word in which love is everywhere about us. Yet, we often fail to see the obvious, but the heart is never blind.
We have a great deal more kindness
than is ever spoken. Maugre [in spite of] all the selfishness that chills
like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element
of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we
scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! How many we see
in the street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly
rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The
heart knoweth.
The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial
exhilaration. In poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of benevolence
and complacency which are felt towards others are likened to the material
effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheering,
are these fine inward irradiations. From the highest degree of passionate
love, to the lowest degree of good-will, they make the sweetness of life.
Friends make us better than who we are. Even the passing and temporary
visit impacts us; the visit of a friend does so even more, especially
when that same stranger is transformed into a friend.
Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection.
The scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to write a letter to a friend,--and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. See, in any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation which the approach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, all things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only the good report is told by others, only the good and new is heard by us. He stands to us for humanity. He is what we wish. Having imagined and invested him, we ask how we should stand related in conversation and action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts conversation with him. We talk better than we are wont.
Friendship, in fact, can transform the very world before us. Shared thoughts
and emotions change everything, making even an old world young again.
What is so pleasant as these jets
of affection which make a young world for me again?
The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there
is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish,--all duties
even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant
of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe
it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone
for a thousand years.
Yet,
we are a part of this thing called friendship. We make friends, and yet,
the irony is that little of it is really our own doing. It happens by
chance; it happens naturally; it happens divinely. My friends have come
to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. . . .
A new person is to me a great event, and hinders me from sleep. . . .
I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine,--and
a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the
lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the
conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness,
his nature finer, his temptations less. Every thing that is his,—his
name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our
own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.
True friendship makes both friends into better people. It is a tide of
ebb and flow. It cannot be any other way. The wonder of it all may be
cause for doubt, but the soul knows its own heart, its own longings.
Yet
the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in
the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the soul,
is too good to be believed. . . .
The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander
self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it
may exalt its conversation or society. This method betrays itself along
the whole history of our personal relations. The instinct of affection
revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of insulation
recalls us from the chase. Thus every man passes his life in the search
after friendship. . . .
Something this transcendental, this evanescence and spiritual needs
to be held with care and high regard. Otherwise, we weave but cobwebs,
and not cloth. Like most things that are precious, friendship is also
fragile.
Yet these uneasy pleasures and
fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life. They are not to be indulged.
This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our friendships hurry to short
and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and
dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart.
Every good friendship must have two core elements, neither of which can
be ignored. The one is honesty; the other deference and respect.
There are two elements that go
to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect
no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named.
One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before
him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so
real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation,
courtesy, and second thought, . . .
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy
begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments,
by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him
under a hundred folds.
The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to men by
every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by
lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and trifle,
but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in another
as to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed, and we so pure, that
we can offer him tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me, I have touched
the goal of fortune. . . .
I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence.
It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. .
. .
We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life,
and embellish it by courage, wisdom, and unity. It should never fall into
something usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive, and add
rhyme and reason to what was drudgery.
There are some areas in life in which a friend must never intrude. Friendship
must always be placed on a pedestal of respect. Above, all friendship
means being a friend.
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. . . .
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. . . Better
be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. . . .
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 suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest
benefit. . . .
Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting
overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The
only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be
one. You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house.
As close as our homes may be to us; it is the soul that is closest of
all. Reverence your friend and be honest with him. Life has no greater
blessing.
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