A
friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I
am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop
even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought
which men never put off, and may deal with him the simplicity and wholeness
with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed,
like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to
speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone
is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and
fend the approach of our fellow man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements,
by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundredfold. Almost every
man we meet requires some civility, requires to be humored-he has some fame,
some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to
be questioned and which spoils conversation with him. But a friend is a sane
man who exercises not my ingenuity but me. My friend gives me entertainment
without requiring me to stoop, or to lisp, or to mask myself. A friend,
therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in
nature whose existence. I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now
the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity,
reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the
masterpiece of nature.
Collected
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