65. Kant’s precepts touching friendship.—Among the moderns, Kant is the only moral philosopher who has given friendship a place in practical morality. He has found new and delicate traits to add to the rules of the ancients. He insists above all on what he calls “the difficulties of friendship,” and above all on the difficulty of conciliating “love and respect.”
“To look at the moral aspect of the thing,” he says, “it is certainly a duty to call a friend’s attention to the mistakes he may commit; for it is done for his good, and is consequently a duty of love. But the friend, thus admonished, sees in the thing but a lack of esteem he had not expected, and thinks he has lost something in your mind; or, seeing himself thus observed and criticised, may at least be in constant fear of losing your esteem. Besides, the fact alone of being observed and censured, will already appear to him an offensive thing in itself.
“How much in adversity do we not wish for a friend, especially an effective friend, one finding in his own resources abundant means for helping us? Yet is it a very heavy burden to feel one’s self responsible for the fortunes of another, and called to provide for his necessities.... Then if the one receives a kindness from the other, perhaps there may be yet reason to hope for perfect equality in love; but he could no longer expect perfect equality in respect; for being under obligation to one he cannot oblige in his turn, he feels himself manifestly one degree his inferior.... Friendship is something so tender that if one does not subject this reciprocal abandonment and interchange of thoughts to principles, to fixed rules, which prevent too great a familiarity and limit reciprocal love by the requirements of respect, it will see itself every instant threatened by some interruption.... In any case affection in friendship should not be a passion; for passion is blind in its choice, and evaporates with time.[50]
66. Duties of benevolence.—Duties minima.—From kindness we pass to benevolence. The one resides in sentiment, the other in acts: the first consists in wishing well, the second in doing good.
The least degree of benevolence consists in rendering to others those smaller services which cost us nothing, and which are helpful to them. It is what Puffendorf calls the duties minima of benevolence.[51]
Cicero, in his Treatise on duties (I., xvi.), gives several examples of this kind:
“To show the way to him who asks for it; to forbid no one the use of running water; to give fire to him who has need of it; to give advice in good faith to him who is in doubt.”
Plutarch, in the same sense, says that the Romans never extinguished their lamps after their meals, and always left something on the table to accustom the servants of the house to the duties of humanity. By the law of Moses, the owner of a field was obliged always to leave some corner uncut and not glean the ears that had escaped the reapers. Finally, a Greek poet, Phocylides, expressed in the following lines this minimum of benevolence which every one can exercise:
“Give shelter to those who have none; lead the blind; be merciful to those who have suffered shipwreck; extend a helping hand to the fallen; assist those that have no one to help them out of danger.”
Among these primitive duties, which cost him that fulfills them but little, the ancients put in the first rank hospitality. It is in fact a virtue of primitive times which exists especially among barbarous and savage peoples. In the poems of Homer we see to what degree the guest was held sacred; it is still so among the Arabs and the Indians of America. This virtue, on the contrary, seems to have disappeared with civilization. The reason of it is that among barbarous populations, where security is feeble, it was the point of honor which guaranteed the security of strangers. But as civilization becomes more complicated, as traveling increases, and security becomes greater, mercenary hospitality takes the place of free and private hospitality. Nevertheless, there can always remain some occasion for this primitive virtue in places isolated and separated from the great centres: this, for example, can still be seen in our days in the great wastes of America and Australia.