Platonic Friendship

SINCE the emancipation of woman, especially in the United States, the relations of the sexes have gained new intellectual aspects. In the discussions on friendship left by the great essayists, woman hardly appears; but now that she goes to college, practices law, writes books, and works on newspapers, the consideration of her human interests must include more than lovers, parents, and children. She will have friends, and some of them will be men.

Friendship between the sexes has the peculiarity that its fullest development is suicidal. It may have a long and happy career without losing its identity, but progress cannot help tending in the direction of love, whether or not it ever reaches that state. However, it is no proof of the unreality of life that its advance brings us ever closer to death, nor is the existence of what we nowadays call platonic friendship, which was formerly called platonic love, denied by the assertion that every added feature brings it nearer to the likeness of love.

As in the spectrum, which contains undoubted blue and equally obvious green, there is a field which may be called by either name, so there are large spaces which may be seen as either love or friendship, as the will of the observer directs his attention to one component or the other. This ambiguity is a great convenience in modern courtship. It makes free love unnecessary; or rather, it is in moderation the principle of temporary free love. The better educated youth of both sexes now use the word “ friendship” to cover investigations in love. It allows ampler experiments. What was once compromising is now but introductory. In some lands, to invite a girl to a solitary walk is equivalent to a proposal. With us, a hundred strolls, full of discussion, may end in a negative conclusion that will be without bitterness. In other days, marriage was an estate which had to be purchased on a distant view. Now, many of its pleasantest groves and avenues may be visited at leisure. He who sees a woman’s heart may take it, said one of the older school. Not only that; he was morally bound to take it. To-day, she may read specimen pages to a score of men before she chooses the final listener. Our two youths explain to each other that their souls are high and capable of knowing friendship as it exists among men, and then they proceed under this banner to exchange sympathy and hopes, unfolding sadness and ideals, until each sees his soul mingled with the nature of the other. He can then better tell how he likes the resultant tint, and many failures are avoided. It often happens that long after the old deciding point has been passed incongruities are discovered ; and on the other hand, difficulties which at first seem final, and would formerly have induced separation, are examined, until they are heaved into place as the foundations of a common life. As long as the name of friendship is preserved, the parties are at liberty to gather knowledge in a probatory spiritual marriage.

The advantages of the new system are mainly for the intelligent. Many girls will fail to comprehend the higher flirtation, and proceed in the same old way, and men will ignorantly marry the piquant face and vivacious manner. But to the marriage of true minds impediments have been removed. The freedom of our education develops platonic flirtation to its noblest uses. If American men make the best husbands, the reason is related to the training they have in meeting, on terms of equality, with many women. It is stupid in men or women to lack the instinct for flirtation ; but this instinct, like so many others, can be turned to the deepest or the emptiest uses. No sharp line can be drawn between investigation anti pretense. To make yourself attractive, comprehending, and sympathetic is the way to draw out another nature and obtain full knowledge, and to condemn all coquetry is like recommending swimming and forbidding water. Sentimental people fear intimacies which do not end seriously; but the increase of knowledge and security is worth some hearts broken before marriage instead of after. Few objects are more readily mended, and few improve so much through injury and repair. Platonic flirtation is one of the safeguards of the human race. As one after another my friends have passed through this gate to the altar, I have been tempted to declare that most platonic friendships end in matrimony ; but a calmer memory recalls numberless escapes, through this probation, from impending wedlock.

As in youth it is advisable to experiment in love under the banner of friendship, so later it is safe to hail with enjoyment the mixture of love in a relation that is mainly friendly. With less experience one needs the protecting fiction. Armed with confidence and knowledge of the world, you can multiply the keenness and delight of friendship by acknowledging the threads of love. After glorying in the resemblance of your first courtships to friendship between men, and gaining privileges and immunities thereby, you can later glory in the elements which no male friendship can contain. If any one then doubts whether platonic friendship exists, you may say that it would be a pity if it did. Wisdom changes its pose to fit its own development, and thus helps each period of life to those goods which belong to it. Do not anticipate the vision of the one, or prolong the haze of the other. They are equally good if taken in season. “ Do you believe platonic friendships exist ? ” I once said to a girl. “ I do not believe anything else exists,” she replied, with scorn ; and I admired her profundity. Needing love, and not friendship, since her experiments had been ample, she challenged conversation on a ground where it might be of practical advantage.

A woman, on the other hand, who has been through all the creations and re-creations of love sometimes returns to her earlier pleasures. Platonic friendship seldom exists so completely as between different ages. A woman of forty and a man of twenty may show it at its purest ; but only on the woman’s side, for the boy is in love. Nothing is so good for a youth as love for a woman twice his age, provided it is not returned. She holds him in check with her skill, and gets the delicate enjoyment of maturity, while he receives, not what he seeks, but what she knows is best.

A remark of those who are cynical about friendship is that the woman merely reflects the thoughts of the man. Even if this were true it would not condemn such intercourse, for ideas can seldom be loaned and returned without being clarified. But it is not true. As woman is intellectually neither artistic nor assertive, a pugnacious spirit will silence her, but a sympathetic and delicate one will encourage her to harmonies and shadings of thought seldom found in man. Drive roughly across her mind, and she will submit, and leave you with the notion that she can only echo your noise ; but tread the paths where she willingly lingers, and you will be shown flowers of her own discovery. No belief is more mistaken than that thought and striking expression are always coincident. Even the most cultivated women are seldom artistic, but they are often intelligent, original, and appreciative. To get at the spirit of our own times, no man can dispense with woman’s friendship. However great his gifts, even if they equal the talent of Stevenson or Kipling, the absence of intimate knowledge of the other sex will hardly be overlooked. Like the destruction of the Mosaic law by the Sermon on the Mount, the emancipation of woman has put upon us all the burden of a new truth. Her importance will increase step by step with the victories of democracy ; for although the Declaration of Independence does not state that men and women are created equal, a spirit which forbids injustice between classes cannot endure the misgovernment of a whole sex.

Stendhal, in his treatise on love, sneers at America for substituting liberty for romance in social intercourse. He describes as strange, barbaric, and destructive of poetry the customs which give young persons of opposite sexes such freedom that temptation and intrigue vanish. His conception was that the charm of women in his favorite Italy grows out of their mystery, and he could see, even with the little knowledge that Europe then had of America, that where boys and girls lived together from childhood to maturity sentimental rhapsodies would decrease. For the steady glow which would take their place he had small respect. Friendship, and love which shades into friendship, he deemed commonplace. Passion alone lent distinction to life, and emotion would break into passion only if it was pent up. If he had heard Dr. Holmes tell of the elopements that have been pounded into harmless dreams on the piano, Stendhal would have found in the story a condemnation of that instrument. The kinship between love and friendship in our day he would have scorned. We, however, who enjoy the trend of modern life, seek not the flagrantly picturesque, but the beauties of sanity and health. We need no stage lights to color what lies before us. Certainly, where the impulses of sentiment have free play, as they have with us, they explode less often.

Whether the liberty for which our relations have become known can continue as our civilization becomes more complex is one of the interesting problems of democracy. That clear-headed European student of American conditions, James Bryce, says : “Social intercourse between youths and maidens is everywhere more easy and unrestrained than in England or Germany, not to speak of France. Yet there are considerable differences between the Eastern cities, whose usages approximate those of Europe, and other parts of the country.” Still, even in New York and Boston Mr. Bryce finds more liberty than in London or Edinburgh, and he goes on :

There can be no doubt that the pleasure of life is sensibly increased by the freedom which transatlantic custom permits ; and as the Americans insist that no bad results have followed, one notes with regret that freedom declines in the places which deem themselves most civilized.” Mr. Bryce is evidently inclined to agree with the German who found American women furchtbar frei und furchtbar fromm, and with our own opinion, of which he says: “ I have never met any judicious American lady who, however well she knew the Old World, did not think that the New World customs conduced more both to the pleasantness of life before marriage and to constancy and concord after it.” Mr. Bryce, it seems to me, slightly exaggerates the changes which have already taken place in such cities as New York and Boston, partly confusing a small and self-conscious set with respectable society at large ; and while there is no doubt that restrictions have been increased in these cities, it is still true that girls and men are genuinely intimate friends and are usually well acquainted before they marry. I am optimist enough to believe that the most interesting young persons even in these cities refuse to be carried along by the sets which ape foreign customs, and that the intercourse of men and women will be kept free and abundant by the very spirit of democracy. Indeed, Mr. Bryce himself says, “The provision for women’s education in the United States is ample and better than that in any European countries,” and women “ feel more independent, they have a fuller consciousness of their place in the world of thought as well as in the world of action.” This equal education of women surely is one of the most potent factors in guaranteeing permanent social liberty, and Mr. Bryce is mistaken in thinking it is essentially less in Eastern college towns. Radcliffe College girls who have gained some of their best knowledge of books and the human heart in walks about Fresh Pond with Harvard students will hardly condemn their daughters to a more timid system. American women, according to Mr. Bryce, look upon the English wife as “ little better than a slave,” because she is “ always deferring to the husband, and the husband always assuming that his pleasure and convenience are to prevail. . . . There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood than in England. ... So far as I have been able to collect views from those observers who have lived in both countries, they are in favor of the American practice. . . . The average European man has usually a slight sneer of condescension when he talks to a woman on serious subjects, . . . Such a notion does not cross an American’s mind.” Is it likely that such a fundamental gain in liberty as this will be surrendered as long as our civilization retains its vitality? Yet surely the equal intercourse with men before marriage is the foundation of woman’s position after, and if she loses one she will lose the other. Many a girl now refrains from marrying a man because full intimacy with him has shown her that, after his initial deference had been pierced, he was the bigoted and bullying male ; and our men know that the best women cannot be had on such terms. Shut girls off from the opportunity to see men through before accepting them, and this happy gain will be lost. " No country,” says Mr. Bryce, “ seems to owe more to its women than America does, nor to owe to them so much of what is best in social institutions and in the beliefs that govern conduct.” He naturally, therefore, finds reason to think that " the influence of the American system tells directly for good upon men as well as upon the whole community. Men gain in being brought to treat women as equals rather than as graceful playthings or useful drudges.”

Such sharp lines as Montaigne and Bacon draw between friendship and love would be absurd in any picture of American life. The concentration of these two interests, which the Greeks accomplished abnormally, the elevation of woman has made normal. I cannot read the Lysis without disgust, mingled with satisfaction that the end so unhealthily sought by a cultivated nation whose women were slaves is reached in the modern world by an extension of freedom. Cynicism will continue to point to the differences of sex as eternal, and the encroachments of love on friendship as inexorable ; but this, like other cynical arguments, though sound, is inconclusive. I have heard intelligent men, with full experience of the meaning of equality, express preference for the Turkish system. They may have it. " Neither give thou Æsop’s cock a gem, who would be better pleased and happier if he had a barleycorn.”We lead the lives we prefer. Equal friendships between men and women may be seen with Johnsonian common sense as all pose by whoever wishes so to see them. Crude common sense is sometimes blind to the kinship between the fictive and the real. We reach the best by pretending the best. Thus, in conversation, the good talker says more than he knows, responding sympathetically to the unexplored depths of companion minds, and learning truth by stating it. In friendship and love, by exaggerating one element or emotion we confirm or reject it. In this respect life is like art, and the highest life most like the highest art. Natures which entirely lack the histrionic are dry. Never to act, pose, and flirt in life is like being without imagination in thought. Those of us, therefore, who look upon friendship between men and women as one of the richest victories of a democratic age cannot be overthrown by any demonstration that it is impossible. Where the two states come into conflict, love will conquer friendship ; but broad tracts of human existence will be made pleasanter by their peaceful alliance.

“ A perfectly honest woman,”says Thackeray, " a woman who never flatters, who never manages, who never cajoles, who never conceals, who never uses her eyes, who never speculates on the effect which she produces, who never is conscious of unspoken admiration, — what a monster, I say, would such a female be! ” Or such a male, we may now add. We know that differences of sex are permanent, but that many similarities between the sexes have never been fully emphasized. The attitude of most of the great essayists on this subject seems to us singularly artificial. In Emerson there is too much of Montaigne, and even in Montaigne an echo of Cicero. Certain impossible, or at least uninviting abstractions are continually handed down the literary ages in place of the complex and useful reality. Some of the greatest of these old philosophers think there is room in a man’s soul for not more than one friend, or at least two or three. Why, the man who marries in these days before he has sounded many of the best notes of friendship with a dozen women (not to speak of the other men) is marrying in the dark. After marriage, to be sure, he has occasionally a companion who corresponds in permanence and preöminence to the old notion of a friend, but the sex has changed. “Friends such as we desire,” observes Emerson, “ are dreams and fables.” Surely they are, for he has been describing an unreal ideal; to me it seems also a rather tiresome ideal. The Concord philosopher feared that if he descended to household joys his mighty gods would vanish. We are changing all that. We have a homely, accessible, domestic ideal, and we are willing to back it for real poetry against anything historic. In the songs of democracy, yet to be sung ; in the imaginative histories of America, yet to be written, this birth of a new friendship between the sexes, giving variety and wholesomeness to youth, elevation to marriage, sweetness to life, will be an honorable power.

Norman Hapgood.