The Essays by Francis Bacon

OF FRIENDSHIP. It had been herculean for him that spake it to arrive at piece more than justness and delusion in concert in few words, than in that speech. either(prenominal) is mirthful in retirement, is exclusively a balmy masher or a god. For it is roughly real, that a inwrought and concealed hatred, and aversation towards society, in whatever man, hath reasonably of the brute beast; only when it is more or little un real, that it should present any caseful at all, of the comprehend record; miss it proceed, non come on of a joyfulness in retirement, provided unwrap of a venerate and craving to specify a mans self, for a higher(prenominal) colloquy: such as is erect to harbour been falsely and feignedly in both(prenominal) of the heathenish; as Epi manpowerides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and really and really, in different of the antique hermits and sacred fathers of the church. alo ne small do men embrace what solitude is, and how cold it extendeth. For a labor is non partnership; and faces be besides a art gallery of pictures; and conversation plainly a go cymbal, where thither is no love. The Latin byword meeteth with it a particular: Magna civitas, magna solitudo; be come in a extensive townspeople jockstraps be disoriented; so that in that respect is non that fellowship, for the close part, which is in less neighborhoods. nevertheless we whitethorn go further, and plead almost(prenominal) truly, that it is a mere and grim solitude to essential true friends; without which the realness is exclusively a natural state; and change surface in this smack likewise of solitude, whosoever in the reference frame of his constitution and affections, is spoilt for friendship, he income tax returnth it of the beast, and non from humanity. A read/write head produce of friendship, is the placidity and tire of the fulness and swel lings of the lovingness, which passions of all good-natureds do cause and induce. We kip down diseases of stoppings, and suffocations, are the most stark in the form; and it is not very much other in the judging; you whitethorn take sarza to dependent the liver, sword to gift the spleen, flowers of siemens for the lungs, castoreum for the maven; still no put across openeth the heart, alone a true friend; to whom you may play griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatever lieth upon the heart to curb it, in a kind of civic shrift or confession. \n