Als wär’ ich im Paradies allein,
says Goethe. “To be alone in paradise would be the height of misery.” Friendship will assert itself athwart the barriers of social inequality, and its germs are so deeply rooted in the instincts of primitive nature that, in default of a communion of kindred souls, the bonds of sympathy have often united saints and sinners, nay, even men and brutes. The traditions of Grecian antiquity have preserved the possibly apocryphal legend of a dolphin that became attached to the company of a young fisherman, and after his death left the sea in search of its friend, and thus perished; but the story of Androcles was confirmed by the experience of Chevalier Geoffroy de la Tour, a crusader of the thirteenth century, who was charmed, but finally distressed, by the affection of a pet lion that followed him like his shadow, and at last fell a victim to his attachment by trying to swim after the ship that conveyed his master from Damascus to Genoa. The traveler Busbequius [[174]]mentions a lynx that set his heart on escorting a camp-follower of a Turkish pasha; and Sir Walter Scott vouches for the touching episode of the Grampian Highlands, where a young hunter met his death by falling from a steep cliff, and was found, months after, half covered by the body of his favorite deerhound, who had followed his friend to the happy hunting-grounds by starving to death at the feet of a corpse.
Among the ancestors of the Mediterranean nations the betrayal of a friend was deemed an act of almost inconceivable infamy; friends and friends engaged in a pledge of mutual hospitality, which was held sacred even in times of war; and among the natives of the South Sea Islands a similar brotherhood of elective affinities existed in the society of the Aroyi, or oath-friends, who held all property in common, and in times of danger unhesitatingly risked their own lives in defense of their ally’s. Professor Letourneau has collected many curious anecdotes of that devotion, which should leave no doubt that altruism in its noblest form can dispense with the hope of post-mortem compensation, and, indeed, with all theological motives whatever.
B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
Unselfishness is the soul of true friendship, yet it nevertheless remains true that all instincts are founded on the experience of benefits or injuries. During the rough transition period from beasthood to manhood, when our uncivilized ancestors roamed the forests of the foreworld, it must have been an [[175]]incalculable advantage to the individual hunter or herder to secure the coöperation of a trusty companion, whose watchful eye would double his chance of finding food or avoiding danger, whose stout arm might parry a blow which unaided strength would have failed to avert. As in other circumstances of natural selection, those who most successfully availed themselves of such advantages had a superior chance of survival and consequently of transmitting their disposition to subsequent generations, and the habit of friendship thus became a hereditary instinct.
The social system of civilized life has since devised manifold substitutes for the coöperation of elective affinities, but various unalienable advantages of the primitive plan have been more or less clearly recognized by all nations, especially by the manful and nature-abiding nations of pagan antiquity. The benefits secured by the mutual aid of sympathizing friends are not limited to the guarantee of civil rights, but extend to the realization of individual hopes and the indulgence of personal inclination and predilections, as well as to the higher privileges of a mental communion for which the panders of selfish wealth have as yet devised no equivalent. The power of approbativeness, the main stimulus of ambition, is infinitely intensified by the emulation of noble friendship, which, in the words of an ancient philosopher, “inspires to deeds heroic, and makes labor worth the toils that lead to success.” Such friendship inspired the heroism of Theseus and Pyrithous, of Harmodius and Aristogiton, of Nisus and Euryalus, and recorded its experience in proverbs which have few parallels in [[176]]the languages of the Christianized nations: “Solem e mundo qui amicitiam e vita tollunt”—“They deprive the world of sunshine who deprive life of friendship.” “Amicum perdere damnorum est maximum”—“To lose a friend is the greatest of losses.” “Amicus magis necessarius quam ignis aut aqua”—“A friend is more needful than fire or water.”
In times of tribulation, when the fury of party-strife overrode all other restraints, friendship has more than once proved its saving power by averting otherwise hopeless perils. Diagoras was thus saved from the rage of allied bigots, Demetrius from the dagger of a wily assassin, the elder Cato from the rancor of political rivals. Without the aid of a friend Cicero would never have survived the intrigues of Catiline. Epaminondas made the approval of friends the sole reward of his heroic life, and vanquished the enemies of his country by the enthusiasm of the “sacred legion” of mutually devoted and mutually inspiring friends. Mohammed the Second yielded to the prayer of a humble companion what he refused to the united threats of foreign embassadors, and Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America, often confessed that he owed his triumphs to the counsel of private friends rather than to the suggestions of his official advisers.