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 protectation to his enemies and to the blows
of fortune, but whoever has loyal friends is thereby provided with a strong
defence 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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