WHAT IS FRIENDSHIP?

The great Roman orator, Cicero, in his celebrated treatise of Friendship, remarks with that it increases happiness and diminishes misery by doubling our joy and dividing our grief. When we do well, it is delightful to have friends who are so proud of our success that they receive as much pleasure from it as we do ourselves. For the friendless man the attainment of wealth, power, and honour is of little value. Such possessions contribute to our happiness the most by enabling us to do good to others, but if all those whom we are able to benefit are strangers, we take far less pleasure in our beneficence than if it were exerted on behalf of the friends whose happiness is as dear to us as our own. Further, when we do our duty in spite of temptation, the mental satisfaction obtained from the approval of our conscience is heightened by the praise of our friends: for judgment is as it were a second conscience, encouraging us in good and deterring us from evil. Our amusements have little zest and soon fall upon us if we engage in them in solitude, or with uncongenial companies, for whom we can feel no affection. Thus in every case our joys are rendered more intense and more permanent by being shared with friends.

                                                           

                                          

It is equally true that, as Cicero points out, friendship diminishes our misery by enabling us to share its burden with others. When fortune has infected a heavy unavoidable blow upon us, our grief is alleviated by friendly condolence and by the thought that, as long as our friends are left to us, life is still worth living.

But many misfortunes which threaten us are not inevitable, and in escaping such misfortunes, the advice and active assistance of our friends may be invaluable. The friendless man stands alone, exposed without protection to his enemies and to the blows of fortune, but whoever has loyal friends is thereby provided with a strong defense against the worst that fortune can do to him.

Thus in good and ill fortune, in our work and in our hours of recreation, true friends is the most important means to the attainment of happiness and the alleviation or avoidance of misery. It must be remembered, however, that these remarks only apply to friends really worthy the name. The evil that may be affected by bad friends is as great as good secured by the possession of good friends. On this account the right selection of friends is of vital importance. We should choose our friends with the greatest care, and, when we have won them and found them worthy, we should take care to retain them till we are severed from them by death.

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