FullReads

This is so well said that it sounds like the easy thing it isn’t. Which of us has not nobly striven, and ignobly failed, to preserve our honest purpose without challenging the taste of our friends? It is hard to tell what people really prize. Heine begged for a button from George Sand’s trousers, and who shall say whether enthusiasm or malice prompted the request? Mr. Oscar Browning, who as Master at Eton must have known whereof he spoke, insisted that it was a mistake to give a boy a well-bound book if you expected him to read it. Yet binding plays a conspicuous part in the selection of Christmas and birthday presents. Dr. Johnson went a step farther, and said that nobody wanted to read any book which was given to him;–the mere fact that it was given, instead of being bought, borrowed, or ravished from a friend’s shelves, militated against its readable qualities. Perhaps the Doctor was thinking of authors’ copies. Otherwise the remark is the most discouraging one on record.

Yet when all the ungracious things have been said and forgotten, when the hard old proverbs have exhausted their unwelcome wisdom, and we have smiled wearily over the deeper cynicisms of Richelieu and Talleyrand, where shall we turn for relief but to Emerson, who has atoned in his own fashion for the harshness of his own words. It is not only that he recognizes the goodness of the man who receives a gift well; but he sees, and sees clearly, that there can be no question between friends of giving or receiving, no possible room for generosity or gratitude. “The gift to be true must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at a level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine, his.”

Critics have been disposed to think that this is an elevation too lofty for plain human beings to climb, an air too rarified for them to breathe; and that it ill befitted a man who churlishly resented the simple, stupid kindnesses of life, to take so sublime a tone, to claim so fine a virtue. We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.

Yet Emerson does not go a step beyond Plato in his conception of the “level waters” of friendship. He states his position lucidly, and with a rational understanding of all that it involves. His vision is wide enough to embrace its everlasting truth. Plato says the same thing in simpler language. He offers his truth as self-evident, and in no need of demonstration. When Lysis and Menexenus greet Socrates at the gymnasia, the philosopher asks which of the two youths is the elder.

“‘That,’ said Menexenus, ‘is a matter of dispute between us.’

“‘And which is the nobler? Is that also a matter of dispute?’

“‘Yes, certainly.’

“‘And another disputed point is which is the fairer?’

“The two boys laughed.

“‘I shall not ask which is the richer, for you are friends, are you not?’

“‘We are friends.’

“‘And friends have all things in common, so that one of you can be no richer than the other, if you say truly that you are friends.’

“They assented, and at that moment Menexenus was called away by some one who came and said that the master of the gymnasia wanted him.”[1]

[Footnote 1: Lysis. Translated by Jowett.]

This is all. To Plato’s way of thinking, the situation explained itself. The two boys could not share their beauty nor their strength, but money was a thing to pass from hand to hand. It was not, and it never could be, a matter for competition. The last lesson taught an Athenian youth was the duty of outstripping his neighbour in the hard race for wealth.

And where shall we turn for a practical illustration of friendship, as conceived by Emerson and Plato? Where shall we see the level waters, the “mine is thine” which we think too exalted for plain living? No need to search far, and no need to search amid the good and great. It is a pleasure to find what we seek in the annals of the flagrantly sinful, of that notorious Duke of Queensberry, “Old Q,” who has been so liberally and justly censured by Wordsworth and Burns, by Leigh Hunt and Sir George Trevelyan, and who was, in truth, gamester, roue,–and friend. In the last capacity he was called upon to listen to the woes of George Selwyn, who, having lost at Newmarket more money than he could possibly hope to pay, saw ruin staring him in the face. There is in Selwyn’s letter a note of eloquent misery. He was, save when lulled to sleep in Parliament, a man of many words. There is in the letter of Lord March (he had not yet succeeded to the Queensberry title and estates) nothing but a quiet exposition of Plato’s theory of friendship. Selwyn’s debts and his friend’s money are intercommunicable. The amount required has been placed that morning at the banker’s. “I depend more,” writes Lord March, “upon the continuance of our friendship than upon anything else in the world, because I have so many reasons to know you, and I am sure I know myself. There will be no bankruptcy without we are bankrupt together.“

Here are the waters flowing on a level, flowing between two men of the world; one of them great enough to give, without deeming himself a benefactor, and the other good enough to receive a gift well.