What the Advocate of the Heart Said

— The question does not appear to me to be friendship’s ; neither, I think, is Emerson speaking of friendship when he says that after one has once known “ a man’s limitations it is all over with him ; ” that love of one’s self “ accuses the other party ; ” in other words, that if the “other party” were sufficiently high to be loved he could not love down to his lover. This is quite Emersonian, and is true enough as applied to those purely intellectual camaraderies which are, as Mr. Hamerton very clearly shows in his Intellectual Life, limited by the very nature of the case. One goes into an intellectual friendship for the sake of what one can get out of it, in the spirit indicated by Emerson ; and, intellects being sadly limited, after a time the end comes, and one goes on to pastures new.

But when one comes to real friendship, which is an affair of the heart rather than of the head, calculations must cease. Friendship, like charity, “ seeketh not her own; ” in a wonderful sense, one gets most, in friendship, by giving most. Her true motto comes from Shakespeare, “ Be sure of this, what I can help thee to thou shalt not miss.” In this spirit she gives, and gives, and gives again ; and in the very worst event, to her “purification becomes the joy of pain.”

Three great sayings strengthen and illustrate this idea that friendship is for service, - for service rendered, not for service received. The supreme word is in that passage in the gospel where the disciples were told that whosoever lost his life for the Master’s sake should find it. Shakespeare’s supreme test of worthiness for manhood in love was the willingness to give and hazard all the man had. And Tennyson, when Sir Galahad would sit in the “ siege perilous ” wherein “ no man could sit but he should lose himself,” makes the dauntless young knight exclaim, “ If I lose myself, I save myself ! ” It is this selflessness, to use one of Tennyson’s words, which is the glory of friendship. She is “careful for nothing ;” she may be “ cast down,” she cannot be destroyed ; she may suffer long, but she is kind.

Friendship, as God, sees down through the outward husk of circumstance, the accident of environment, which has caused petty faults and affectations, which may even have built these up into great faults or vices ; she detects beneath all this that which would be better if it could, that which would have been more noble had the environment been less belittling. She sees the flame of good at the core, which exists in us all, however tiny or feeble it be; she looks on that, and patiently fans, and fans, and fans it, never worn out, though often weary. She finds the common ground and stands there, obeying one of Mr. Ruskin’s maxims in dwelling upon points of consonance rather than points of dissonance. As long as a friendship is so new as to be still discovering fresh congenialities, it grows and flourishes ; by and by, upon a toilsome day, a vexation creeps in, an offense comes, and differences begin to be discovered, magnified, dwelt upon. Let one die then, and instantly the surviving friend once more dwells tenderly upon the common tastes and aspirations. I have seen this again and again, and tested it many times, until I doubt whether we ought ever to “ thank God we are not as other men.” If sympathy is the great bond which makes the world’s work and life itself possible, surely we dare not do so.

Very many times that passes for friendship which is the sheerest self-love. Who can doubt that jealousy and wounded feeling spring chiefly from this source, and that these are the greatest killers of friendship ?

I know that in writing thus of friendship I may be accused of overshooting the mark, — of speaking of that grand general “love of benevolence,” I think some catechism calls it, which cares for all the world alike ; but this is not the case. I do not hold that it is possible to cherish the affection of which I speak, and for which I plead, equally with all the world. “ It is ever with man’s soul as it was with the universe ; the beginning of creation is light.” There must be a light, a spark struck out between spirits, a discovery of special congeniality, if you like to call it so. But this may be very slight, a mere “ outward and visible sign ; ” the rest is “ inward and spiritual grace,” and “ the soul, of its own beauty, will lend beauty to whatsoever it looks on with love,” or, better still, it will find the beauty which is already there ; for, in a sense beyond this special sense which forms the original bond of friendship, we are all at one if the soul’s sight is keen enough to see it. After all, is not the power to forgive a test of genuine friendship ?