Friendship By Francis Bacon
Aristotle said in his Politics ‘Whoever is delighted in solitude, is
either a wild beast or a god.’ It would have been hard for him to put more
truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech. For it is most
true that a natural and secret hatred and aversion towards society in any
man has somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should
have any character at all of the divine nature, unless it comes not out of
pleasure in solitude but out of a love and desire to sequester oneself for
a higher conversation, such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly
engaged in by some of the heathen, such as
•Epimenides, the Candian,
•Numa, the Roman,
•Empedocles, the Sicilian, and
•Apollonius,
of Tyana. and truly and really in various ancient hermits and holy fathers
of the church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it
extends; for where there is no love a crowd is not company, and faces are
only a gallery of pictures, and talk is merely a tinkling cymbal. The Latin
adage meets with it a little: Magna civitas, magna solitudo [‘Great city,
great wilderness’], because in a great town friends are scattered, so that
there is little of the fellowship that is in smaller neighborhoods; but we
may go further and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable
solitude to lack true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness;
and....whoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for
friendship, he takes this from the beasts, not from humanity.
A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the
fulness and swellings of the heart, which are caused and induced by
passions of all kinds. We know that diseases of stoppings and suffocations
are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the
mind. You may take sarsaparilla to open the liver, steel to open the
spleen, f lower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but the
only recipe that opens the heart is a true friend, to whom you may impart
griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatever lies upon
the heart to oppress it, ·doing this· in a kind of civil shrift or
confession.
It is a strange thing to observe how highly great kings and monarchs
value this fruit of friendship I am speaking of; so highly that in many
cases they purchase it at the risk of their own safety and greatness; for
princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their
subjects and servants, can gather this fruit only if (to make themselves
capable of it) they raise some persons to be as it were companions, and
almost equals to themselves, which often leads to difficulties. Modern
languages give to such persons the name of ‘favourites’ or ‘privadoes’, as
if it were a mere matter of grace or conversation; but the Roman name
attains the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum
[‘partakers of cares’], for that is what ties the knot. And we see plainly
that this has been done not only by weak and passionate princes but ·also·
by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned, who have often joined to
themselves Friendship some of their servants, whom they have called
‘friends’, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner,
using the word that is received between private men.
L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after
surnamed the Great) to such a height that Pompey boasted that he was more
than Sylla’s equal in battle. ·After some hostilities·, Sylla began to
speak grandiosely; Pompey turned upon him again and in effect told him to
be quiet, because the rising sun was adored by more men than the setting
sun. With Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained so much interest that
Caesar set him down in his testament as heir in remainder after his nephew;
and this was the man that had power with him [i.e. had enough influence
over him] to draw him to his death. For when Caesar would have discharged
the senate, influenced by some bad omens and especially a dream of
Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling
him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate till his wife had dreamed a
better dream. And it seems that his favour was so great that Antonius, in a
letter that is quoted verbatim in one of Cicero’s Philippics, calls him
venefica [‘witch’], as if he had enchanted Caesar. Augustus raised Agrippa
(though of mean [see Glossary] birth) to such a height that when he
consulted with Maecenas about the marriage of his daughter Julia, Maecenas
took the liberty of telliing him that he must either marry his daughter to
Agrippa or take away Agrippa’s life; there was no third way, he had made
him so great. [Then two more such anecdotes, involving Roman emperors and
the lower-ranked people they condescendingly took as ‘friends’.] Now, if
these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, one might have
thought that this conduct had come from an abundant goodness of nature; but
being men so clever, of such strength and severity of mind, and such
extreme lovers of themselves, as all these princes were, it proves most
plainly that they found their own happiness (though as great as ever
happened to mortal men) to be a mere half-piece unless they could have a
friend to make it entire. And yet they were princes that had wives, sons,
nephews; yet all these could not supply the comfort of friendship.
It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observes concerning his
first master, Duke Charles the Hardy, namely that he would not communicate
his secrets to anyone, least of all the secrets that troubled him most. He
goes on, and says that towards the Duke’s old age this closeness did harm
to his understanding. Surely, Comineus might—if he had wanted to—have made
the same judgment also concerning his second master, Louis XI, whose
closeness was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but
true: Cor ne edito, [‘Eat not the heart.’] Certainly, if one wanted to give
it a hard phrase, those who lack friends to open themselves up to are
cannibals of their own hearts; but one thing is most admirable (I shall
conclude this first fruit of friendship with it), which is that this
communicating of a man’s self to his friend has two contrary effects, for
it redoubles joys, and cuts griefs in half; for anyone who imparts his joys
to his friend joys the more; and anyone who imparts his griefs to his
friend grieves the less. So that its power to operate upon a man’s mind
resembles the power the alchemists used to attribute to their ‘stone’ for a
man’s body, namely that it works all contrary effects but still to the good
and benefit of nature. But yet, without bringing alchemists into the story,
there is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature; for in
bodies union strengthens and cherishes any natural action; and on the other
side weakens and dulls any [We can see why Bacon called these ‘contrary’
effects; but they aren’t, are they?] Friendship violent impression; and
that is how it is with minds.
The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for
the understanding, as the first is for the affections; for friendship makes
indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it makes
daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.
This is true not only of faithful counsel that a man receives from his
friend; before you come to that, it is certain that when someone has his
mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and
break up in communicating and discoursing with another; he tosses his
thoughts more easily; he marshalls them in a more orderly way; he sees how
they look when they are turned into words; eventually he grows wiser than
himself, achieving more of this by an hour’s discourse than by a day’s
meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the king of Persia: ‘That
speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, with the imagery
appearing in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs.’ Neither
is this second fruit of friendship in opening the understanding confined
only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel (they indeed are
best), but even without that a man learns of himself, and brings his own
thoughts to light, and sharpens his wits as against a stone that does not
itself cut. In a word, it would be better for a man to relate himself to a
statue or picture than to allow his thoughts to pass in smother.
Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, another
point that lies more open and falls within vulgar observation, namely
faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus says well in one of his enigmas
‘Dry light is ever the best’; and certain it is that the light that a man
receives by counsel from another is drier and purer than what comes from
his own understanding and judgment, which is always infused and drenched in
his affections and customs. So, just as there is as much difference between
a the counsel that a friend gives and b what a man gives himself, as there
is between a the counsel of a friend and c the counsel of a f latterer; for
there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self, and there is no such remedy
against flattery of a man’s self as the liberty of a friend.
Counsel is of two sorts, one concerning manners, the other concerning
business; for the first, the best prescription to keep the mind in health
is the faithful admonition [= ‘the sincere reprimand’] of a friend. The
calling of a man’s self to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too
piercing and corrosive; reading good books of morality is a little flat and
dead; observing our faults in others is sometimes improper for our case;
but the best prescription (best to work, and best to take) is the
admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross errors
and extreme absurdities many people (especially of the greater sort)
commit—to the great damage both of their fame and fortune—for lack of a
friend to tell them of them. For, as St. James says, they are like men
‘that look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their own shape and
favour.’ [James 1:23] As for business, a man may think if he will that •two
eyes see no more than one; or that
•a gamester always sees more than a looker-on; or that
•a man in anger is as wise as he who has said over the four and twenty
letters ·to calm himself·; or that
•a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest;
and other such foolish and high imaginations, thinking himself all in all;
but when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which sets business
straight. And if any man pland to take counsel by pieces, asking counsel
concerning one business of one man, and concerning another business of
another man, this is well enough (that is to say, better, Expense perhaps,
than if he asked none at all); but he runs two risks.
(i) One is that he will not be faithfully counselled; for
it is a rare thing, unless it is from a perfect and entire friend, to have
counsel given that is not bowed and crooked to some ends which the
counselor has. And
(ii) the other risk is that he shall have counsel given,
hurtful and unsafe (though with good intention), and mixed partly of
illness and partly of remedy. It is as though you were to •call a physician
who was thought good for the cure of the disease you complain of, but is
unacquainted with your body; and therefore may put you in a way for a
present cure, but overthrows your health in some other way, and so •cure
the disease and kill the patient. But a friend who is wholly acquainted
with a man’s estate will
•be cautious about how by furthering any present business he might rush
into some other inconvenience, and therefore will •not rely upon scattered
counsels, which will distract and mislead rather than settle and direct.
After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the
affections, and support of the judgment), there follows the last fruit,
which is, like the pomegranate, full of many kernels. I mean aid, and
having a part in all actions and occasions. Here the best way to represent
the manifold uses of friendship is to calculate and see how many things
there are that a man cannot do for himself; and then it will appear that it
was a sparing speech of the ancients to say that ‘a friend is another
himself’, because someone’s friend is far more than himself. Men have their
time, and die many times in desire of some things that they principally
take to heart: the welfare of a child, the finishing of a work, or the
like. If a man has a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care
of those things will continue after him; so that a man has, as it were, two
lives in his desires. He has a body, and that body is confined to a place;
but where there is friendship, all offices of life are—as it were—granted
to him and his deputy, for he may exercise them through his friend. How
many things are there which a man cannot unblushingly say or do himself? A
man can scarcely allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them;
a man sometimes cannot bring himself to supplicate or beg or other things
of that sort; but all these things are graceful in a friend’s mouth, which
are blushing in a man’s own. So, again, a man’s person has many proper
relations which he cannot put off. He cannot speak to his son but as a
father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms; whereas
a friend may speak as the case requires and not as it fits with the person.
But to enumerate these things would be endless; I have given the rule,
where a man cannot fitly play his own part. If he has no friend, he may
quit the stage.
K Rajaram IRS 231125
On Sun, 23 Nov 2025 at 02:08, Jambunathan Iyer <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Speech, action, and behavior are what build friendship. They create unity
> and strengthen human society. Clear communication: The ability to speak and
> the attitude to face shortcomings.
>
>
> *N Jambunathan , Chennai " What you get by achieving your goals is not as
> important as what you become by achieving your goals. If you want to live a
> happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things "*
>
>
>
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