The books for young people say a great deal about the _selection_
of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about
_Friends_. They mean associates and confidants merely. "Know
that the contrariety of foe and Friend proceeds from God."
Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one
another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No
professions nor advances will avail. Even speech, at first,
necessarily has nothing to do with it; but it follows after
silence, as the buds in the graft do not put forth into leaves
till long after the graft has taken. It is a drama in which the
parties have no part to act. We are all Mussulmen and fatalists
in this respect. Impatient and uncertain lovers think that they
must say or do something kind whenever they meet; they must never
be cold. But they who are Friends do not do what they _think_
they must, but what they _must_. Even their Friendship is to
some extent but a sublime phenomenon to them.
The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in
some such terms as these.
"I never asked thy leave to let me love thee, - I have a right. I
love thee not as something private and personal, which is _your
own_, but as something universal and worthy of love, _which I
have found_. O, how I think of you! You are purely good, - you
are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not think
that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to live."
"You are the fact in a fiction, - you are the truth more strange
and admirable than fiction. Consent only to be what you are. I
alone will never stand in your way."
"This is what I would like, - to be as intimate with you as our
spirits are intimate, - respecting you as I respect my ideal.
Never to profane one another by word or action, even by a
thought. Between us, if necessary, let there be no
acquaintance."
"I have discovered you; how can you be concealed from me?"
The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously
accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They
cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's
dreams.
Though the poet says, "'Tis the pre-eminence of Friendship to
impute excellence," yet we can never praise our Friend, nor
esteem him praiseworthy, nor let him think that he can please us
by any _behavior_, or ever _treat_ us well enough. That kindness
which has so good a reputation elsewhere can least of all consist
with this relation, and no such affront can be offered to a
Friend, as a conscious good-will, a friendliness which is not a
necessity of the Friend's nature.
The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to one another,
by constant constitutional differences, and are most commonly and
surely the complements of each other.
