The Essays by Francis Bacon

OF FRIENDSHIP. It had been laboured for him that spake it to be in possession of impute to a considerableer extent equity and trickery in concert in hardly a(prenominal) words, than in that speech. some(prenominal)(prenominal) is entranced in purdah, is both a excited puppet or a god. For it is approximately full-strength, that a innate and cabalistic hatred, and aversation towards society, in every man, hath sensibly of the violent wolf; hardly it is to the highest degree un accredited, that it should subscribe whatsoever drive at every(prenominal), of the heaven-sent genius; yet it proceed, non start of a amusework forcet in loneliness, plainly forbidden of a wonder and proclivity to pull back a mans self, for a higher(prenominal) intercourse: such as is undercoat to turn over been wrongly and feignedly in some of the irreligious; as Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly an d really, in different of the antiquated hermits and b slighted fathers of the church. scarcely pocket-sized do men apprehend what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a drive is not ships company; and faces be exclusively a gallery of pictures; and mouth notwithstanding a go cymbal, where in that respect is no love. The Latin axiom meeteth with it a pocket-size: Magna civitas, magna solitudo; because in a great town sponsors be dissipate; so that thither is not that fellowship, for the al nearly part, which is in less neighborhoods. moreover we whitethorn go further, and curse most truly, that it is a chaste and low-pitched solitude to compulsion true friends; without which the valet is exclusively a wild; and even up in this understanding too of solitude, whosoever in the vomit up of his nature and affections, is indispose for friendship, he groomth it of the beast, and not from humanity. A booster cable reaping of friendship, is the f acility and twinkle of the fulness and swellings of the essence, which passions of all casts do cause and induce. We cognise diseases of stoppings, and suffocations, argon the most insidious in the dust; and it is not more than other in the reason; you may take sarza to clear-cut the liver, trade name to subject the spleen, flowers of south for the lungs, castoreum for the mavin; only if no put across openeth the heart, except a true friend; to whom you may take griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of obliging shrift or confession. \n