Love & Friendship
Lecture 18: Self-Love, Friendship, and the Nature of True Affection

Transcript
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Or my friend is my next self, right? You see? But that means that I've got to, in a sense, carry over to another the kind of love that I have for myself. So that the love I have for myself is a source of my loving others. And maybe that's in a way true about God, too, right? Okay? Because God, by loving himself, right, is able to love what others do. Okay? Now, a description here of Beatrice, kind of a proud woman, but kind of exaggerated for the purpose of the plot and the thing there. But pride there, this excessive self-love, is an impediment to what? Loving another, right? But nature never framed a woman's heart of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice. Disdain and scorn ride sparkly in her eyes. Those effects of pride, right? It has scorn and contempt. Misprizing what they look on. And her wit values itself so highly that to her all matter else seems weak. She cannot love, nor take no shape, nor project of affection. Love is a metamorphosis, we saw, right? Taking on the shape of the thing in what? Love, right? It's a transformation of her heart. She is so self-endeared, right? That the way the words are describing her in a bad sense, right? Now here's self-love is the name of a sin, right? In the sign of 62. Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye, and all my soul, and all my every part. See, it's in that shape, right? You know, you're supposed to love God with your whole heart and your whole soul, you know? Well, here it's sin of self-love, huh? Pride, huh? Possesseth. A firm grasp of me, right? All mine eye, all my, what? I mean, my mind, right? All my soul and all my every part. And for this sin there is no remedy. Why? Because it's so grounded inward in my heart, huh? Use that word stubborn sometimes, which comes from the stub of a tree, right? Oh, the heart is hard to get out. Oh, it rounds this all the time, huh? We think no face so gracious as is mine. No shape so true, no truth of such account. And for myself, mine own worth to define. As I, all other, and all worth surmount. But now, sin just comes from a lack of, what? Self-knowledge, right? The seven wise men of Greece put up at the Oracle of Delphi. The knoweth thee sauton. Know thyself, right? And if you do know yourself, you find out you're not too lovable, right? But when my glass, meaning my mirror, right? Shows me myself indeed, Beated and chocked with tanned antiquity. Mine own self-love, quite contrary, I read. Self, so self-loving. We're iniquity, right? Tis thee myself that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days. I can purchase friends. Now, that section we just finished was to loosen up your head to think about the connection between self-love, right, and friendship, right? And that there is a self-love that is the beginning of friendship, right? And there's a self-love that is a, what, impediment to friendship, right? And, you know, when Thomas talks about the man who dies for another man, right, who lays down his life for another man, does he love that other man more than himself? Now, they take the example in the military there where a grenade is lobbed into the midst of us here, right? There's not time to pick it up or throw it back, and one of us throws himself upon that and saves the rest of us, right? Now, is that man who did that, does he love his fellow soldiers more than himself? He's doing a noble thing, which is good for himself. Yeah. If you're a materialist, you say, well, yeah, he loves the other men more than himself because he's going to destroy his own body, I mean, not voluntarily, but he's going to, you know, let his own body be blown up to save the bodies of the other men around him, right? But if you're not a materialist and you see he's chosen a most, what, glorious, noble, right, deed, right, he's chosen the better part, as we'd say, as Christ would say, right? So even Christ dying on the cross has chosen a nobler thing, right? So even in my dying to save your life, I'm loving myself, well, right, more than I love you. Do you see that? That's something, you know. But the fact that the average person, you know, if he went down Main Street, they'd say, well, the guy who throws himself upon the grenade, he's loving his fellow soldiers more than himself, they'd think, right? But that's because they're thinking of myself as being more the body than the, what, soul and the will and so on. Because that's why self-love means usually something bad, right? Because you're loving as yourself, your bodily or even your animal nature, right? As if that's me. I'm just an animal, you see? Okay. Now the next topic is one that's familiar to us from our study of what? Love, right? Well, likeness was the third article there. Likeness is a cause of love, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. Now, there's a beautiful scene here where, as I mentioned, Portia and Bassanio have just become married, and now's the time for them to go off their honeymoon. And Bassanio receives a letter informing him of the misfortune of Antonio and how Antonio's life is now in danger, like we were seeing in that previous selection. And Portia realizes how close a friend of Antonio must be to Bassanio, the way he's so upset by this news, right? And she urges him, you know, to drop everything and to go to the rescue, if he can, of Antonio, right? And she's willing to, you know, she's a wealthy woman, you know, whatever it takes, right? And so after Bassanio leaves, Lorenzo, who's still there, right, on the occasion of this, he praises Portia for her understanding or appreciation of this friendship, huh? The friendship of Bassanio and Antonio, right? This appreciation of friendship in general, right? But as you read this, you'll see the connection between likeness now, huh? And Lorenzo says, Madam, although I speak it in your presence, you don't usually like to praise people too much to their presence, you have a noble and a true conceit, a true thought, a true understanding, right? Of God-like amity, of... Notice the expression there, right? The friendship is something God-like, huh? God is love, right? Now, this appears most strongly in bearing thus the absence of your Lord. Your husband. I called up one of my colleagues and his wife and I said, Can I speak to your Lord and Master? Oh. She's very quick, says, Oh, he's doing the dishes, just a minute. But then Lorenzo, who knows Antonio, right? He starts to speak of Antonio, right? And he says, But if you knew to whom you show this honor, this friend of your husband that he's going to rescue of, but if you knew to whom you show this honor, how true a gentleman you send relief, right? How dear a lover of my Lord, your husband. Now notice he calls there, in the English, a friend, a what? Lover, right? Now today you'd probably be misunderstood if you said that, right? Okay. But as I mentioned before, the Greek language, the Latin language for that matter, especially the Greek, has many words for what? Love, right? And we in English don't have that same abundance of words. So sometimes you use love for what the Greeks would call eros, or what the Latins would call amor, right? Sometimes you use love for charity, right? Sometimes you use love for what? Like the philosopher is a lover of wisdom, right? And the word you have there, the word for love in the lover of wisdom, philein, is connected with the Latin or Greek word for love, for friend. Philos, right? Okay. So in the Greek word, in someone in the Latin word too, amor and amari and so on, amicitia, you can see a connection between, in the words themselves, between the name for a friend and friendship and one of the names for love, right? I mentioned how in English, I guess if you look in the etymological dictionaries, the word friend originally did have a connection with a word for love, for yogan, in Anglo-Saxon I think it is. But that connection has, that word is dropping out of our language, right? Okay. So he's obviously using the word lover here in the sense of what? A friend, right? One who loves you in the way a friend loves you, right? Okay. Otherwise he wouldn't seem to say to his wife. If, you know. But it shows how, in contemporary use of the word love, how narrow is their understanding of love, right? You know? It says, if you know how dear, how true a gentleman Antonio is, the merchant of Venice, how dear a friend of your Lord, your husband, my Lord, I know you would be prouder of the work that customary bounty can enforce you to. Well now, notice the way Portia's mind works, right? She never met Antonio, right? She loves dearly Bassanio, right? And she knows that, what? Antonio is a very dear friend of Bassanio, right? Well, her mind is going to go now from effect to, what? God's. If they love each other that much, as you can see in the way he was affected by his letter, they must be very much like each other. Since I dearly love Bassanio for the kind of man he is, I'm sure I would like very much Antonio, right? You see what she's doing? She's reasoning from the effect back to the, what? Cause. And Portia says, I never did repent for doing good, nor shall not now. For in companions that do converse and waste the time together, right? Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love. How beautiful you said that is, huh? There must be needs a like proportion of liniments of man who's in a spirit. We must be like each other, right? With that close. We spend too much time together. Which makes me think, huh? That this Antonio, being the bosom lover of my friend, the bosom lover, the intimate friend of my husband, right? Must needs be like my Lord. He must be like her husband, right? He said she did. If it be so, how little is the cost I have bestowed in purchasing, those two words are right together, the semblance, right, of my soul from out the state of hellish cruelty. Now who's the semblance of my soul? Yeah. And who's my soul? Yeah. See, the husband and the wife are like soul and body, right? Okay. And the friend of her soul, her husband is the semblance of my soul. All right. This is another word for likeness, huh? You see that? Beautiful way it's close, huh? Now, remember that proverb that Aristotle quoted and Thomas quoted as one of those objections, you know, potter fights with potter, right? Okay. Because sometimes they come in conflict, right? Not because they like each other, but because they're trying to sell the same thing because they're alike in their art. I've mentioned, I think, the friction there between Thackeray and Dickens, right? The two most famous novelists of the 19th century there in England, and they were really in competition, right? When Thackeray printed Vanity Fair, and then Copperfield came back, you know, Dickens' greatest novel. And apparently they were, you know, each trying to sell the other one, huh? Of course, the funny thing is, was it Thackeray's little daughter said, why don't you write more like St. Dickens? Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho who had many friends in the literary world and many friends in the world among painters and so on right now. He sees this, huh? He says, there are no friendships among men of talents in the arts more likely to be sincere than those between painters and poets. And he had many friends. He's a great writer, but he had very good friends among painters. Now, why are the painters and the poets better friends than two painters or two poets? He says, possessed of the same qualities of mind governed by the same principles of taste and natural laws of grace and beauty, but applying them to different yet mutually illustrative arts, they are constantly in sympathy and never in collision with each other like the two potters. And so in his Life of Oliver Goldsmith, he says, he's giving this, this is apropos of a big observation, the friendship of goldsmith with what the famous painter, Joshua Reynolds. Okay. The latter was now about forty years of age, a few years older than the poet, whom he charmed by the blindness and benignity of his manners, and the nobleness and generosity of his disposition as much as he did by the pieces of his pencil and the magic of his coloring. They are men of kindred genius excelling in corresponding qualities of their silver arts. And he makes a nice sweat. Because the likeness of what? There's times to say a proportion here, right? For style and writing is what color is in painting. That's clear enough, huh? So that's clear enough, huh? So there's a likeness between these two men, but not in something that's going to lead them into conflict, like if we're both novelists and trying to write the most popular novel in England, then we're in conflict, right? Okay. Now Boswell, I was a busybody, always trying to make friendship with the mighty and the great and so on. And it's very funny that we became a friend of Samuel Johnson. But anyway, my desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every description had made me much about the same time obtain an introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes Esquire. Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all mankind. They'd even attack one another with some asperity in their writings. Yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each. Sir John Pringle, my own friend and my father's friend, between whom and Dr. Johnson, I in vain wish to establish an acquaintance, as I respected and lived in intimacy with both of them, observed to me once very ingeniously. It is not in friendship as in mathematics, he says, where two things, each equal to a third, take equal between themselves. You agree with Johnson as a middle quality, and you agree with me as a middle quality. middle quality. But Johnson and I should not agree. Have you ever had the experience of being a good friend of two different men, let's say, and getting along with both of them, but those two guys can't get along with each other? Now, does that contradict the idea that likeness is a cause of love? Because if Joe is like me, because we're friends, and Tom is like me because we're friends, then shouldn't Joe and Tom be like each other because we're equal to the third, equal to each other? Or could it be, in other words, that Joe is like me in some things I have, right? One part of my personality, one part of my interest, and Tom is like me in other interests that I have. So one of my friends was interested in history and politics and so on. Other friend was interested in those things at all, but he was interested in science and philosophy. I was interested in both, right? you see? So I could get along with both these guys, but they just rubbed each other the wrong way, you see? But what might at first seem to be a contradiction to the idea that likeness is a cause of love, and you analyze more carefully, you see, why? I'm a friend of both, but they're not a friend of each other, right? You know, that's something to bring together. Not to see the collision and explosion, but... Okay. Now, the next topic of conversation here on friendship is connection between time and friendship, right? And this is a difference between friendship and romantic love, right? And emotion in general, that romantic love can be like that, huh? And of course we can believe the poets, all the famous lovers in fiction there, it's love at first sight, huh? The first time Romeo sees Juliet, right? And Shakespeare himself quotes one of the other English writers there. Christopher Marlowe, right? With Faustus and so on. Christopher Marlowe has a love poem on here on Leander, whoever loved that loved not at first sight. And so the semantic love can be all at once, huh? A sudden thing, huh? But can friendship be all at once, see? Aristotle will say in the treatise on friendship that the desire to be friends can arise like that, huh? You meet somebody at a function and you're attracted to them. But is that yet a friendship? No. Friendship takes what? Time, huh? Okay. I noticed this letter at Johnson to Ben at Langton, an old friend. He'd been writing down to his house or something. How welcome your account of yourself and your invitation to your new house was to me. I need not tell you who consider our friendship not only as formed by choice, but as matured by time, right? Now both of those points would be made by Aristotle in the treatise on friendship, right? The one is a friend not by emotion, right? But by choice, huh? And that's certainly true of the eyes kind of friendship, huh? So Romeo, I mean, Hamlet says, talking about his friendship with Horatio, since my dear Saul was mistress of her choice and could have been distinguished, her election, another word for choice, right? Has sealed thee for herself, right? So it's formed by choice, but we matured into a friendship by, what, time, huh? Requires habit there. And a little bit about that second thing there. We have been long enough acquainted to have many images in common, huh? So very often, the friend, you talk over something in the past, don't you? I had to go to my wife to high school union and I'll use it for those. And therefore, to have a source of conversation which neither the learning, right, nor the wit of a new companion can supply, right? Okay. Jane Austen here. Conversation of brother and sister there. All the evil and good of their earliest years could be gone over again, and every former united pain and pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection. And advantage this a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal ties... The fraternal, right? Your brother or sister, you were brought up together in the same household. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power which no subsequent connections can supply, and must be by a long and a natural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, is such precious remains of the earliest attachments ever in Taliyal Deh. Too often, alas, it is so. Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at other times worse than nothing. And what might have struck, you know, when you read the account there that the first apostles are being called by our Lord, right? And there's Peter and Andrew who are brothers, right? And then James and John who are brothers, right? It's something to be learned from the fact that the first apostles he called were, what, brothers, many brothers who worked in a similar occupation too, huh? I think there's something striking about that, right? I mean, a lot of times I'll talk about how the love of charity should be opposed to natural love and kind of, what, build upon it, huh, or perfect it or harmonize it, right? But, you know, that's the thing about choosing brothers that you have to think about, huh? Okay? That's partly a result of what? Having spent all that time in the beginning of life together, huh? I need to get a view of my brothers now, you know, and if someone else is trying to follow our conversation, there's so many allusions to things and little phrases that recall things, you know, a lot of people can't really follow what we're doing or why we're amused by this, huh? Now, in Midsummer Night's Dream there's a lot of magic going on, you know, people getting their eyes anointed and falling out of love with one person and falling in love with somebody else, right? And this leads to a friction between Helena and Hermia who were brought up together, right? They weren't sisters but they were close, right? And so what this stakes made in who's to be anointed in the eyes and so on, Helena to Hermia, injurious Hermia, most ungrateful may? Have you conspired? Have you at these contrived to bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel we too have shared the sisters' vows like sisters now? The hours we have spent and we have shed the hasty-footed time for parting us? Oh, is all forgot? All school days, friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods have with our needles created one flower, both in one sampler, sitting on one cushion, both warbling of one song, both in one key, as if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds have been incorporate. Like one body, that's right. So we grew together like to a double cherry. You see a double cherry sometimes, right? A stem. Oh, yeah. Seeming parted, but yet in union and partition. Two lovely berries molded in one stem, so we with two seeming bodies but one heart. Two of the first like coats and heraldy, two but to one, like you would combine sometimes, two families, you know, and make the little bit of my family coat and your coat and the same heraldy. And will you rent our ancient love, ancient love, say, we're to read by time, right? Asunder, to join with men in scorning your poor friend. It is not friendly, it is not beatenly. Our sex, as well as I, may chide you forth, though I alone to feel the injury. Now, I have a passage here from the life of Samuel Johnson. This is the one in the great books, right? Most famous biography in English language. From Johnson to another Langton here. It is now long since we saw one another, and whatever has been the reason neither you have written to me nor I to you, to let friendship die away by negligence and silence. It's certainly not wise. In this sense, friendship resembles a virtue, right? Because virtue at least moral virtue is acquired by repeated acts. And if those acts, you know, cease, you can eventually wear away again, right? The same way friendship, right, is developed by repeated acts, right? And then if you're separated from your friend for some reason, right, you don't keep in contact, then you don't You hear people often talking about this, right? So this is an aspect of friendship, that it takes time. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage, of which when it is, as it must be finally taken away, he that travels on alone will wonder how his esteem could be sold at all. Do not forget me, you see that I do not forget you. It is pleasing in the silence of solitude to think that there is one at least, or ever distant, of whose benevolence, that's the goodwill, right? There is little doubt, and whom there is yet hope of seeing again, huh? Aristotle will say, you know, for there to be friendship, not only do you and I have to have goodwill towards each other, but we have to know that we have goodwill towards each other, right? That I wish you good, and you wish me good, and we both know this, right? I could wish you well without you knowing it, and vice versa, or even could we both and not know it, right? But friendship requires an addition that we know this, right? And you can see that in this case here. Of whose benevolence, there's little doubt, right? You can't really doubt that his friend has goodwill towards him, huh? Towards him, Christy, huh? The amity, the friendship, that wisdom knits not, following may easily untie. There was that thing we had at Passage before, didn't we, about leagues and folly, you know, and so on, where Johnson got kind of irritable about his friends. How many friends of you don't form that virtue, right? But if you go back to those words of Hamlet there, he's chosen Horatio because he's not passion slave, right? It's a negative way of saying that he's what? A virtuous man, right? Let me not to the marriage of two minds admit impediments. This is a very famous sonnet of Shakespeare. Now, the marriage of two minds is what? What do you mean by friendship? And sometimes even between the soul and God, they speak of this as marriage, right? Like in that prophecy, O Sion, God says, I betrothed you in faith, huh? Let me not to the marriage of two minds admit impediments. Love is not love, which alters when an alteration finds. Or bends it to remove, huh? That'd be a very stable thing, this true friendship, huh? Oh, no, it is an ever-affixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is a star to every wandering bark, whose worth's unknown of those height be taken. I'm not sure if we understand all that, but it sounds pretty good. Yeah. But through all these difficulties, right? Mm-hmm. It persists, right? A friend in need is a friend indeed, right? Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come. So these men that leave their wives when they get... When those rosy lips and cheeks... Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, huh? But bears it out even to the edge of doom. Judgment Day, right? And what Shakespeare's talking about here is true love. It's forever, right? And that's why he says, be in there now, right? If this be the error, and upon me proved, I never writ, for no man ever loved. You can see it very likely, didn't you? Shakespeare says things so well that he can't prove upon them. Now, sign 74, again, between the friendship. But it's going to bring out, again, that the friendship is more in the... Between soul and soul, right? Than between body and body, right? But be contented when that fell to rest without all bail shall carry me away, huh? Well, the representative carried out the jail. My life hath in this line some interest, which for memorials still with thee shall stay. When thou reviewest this, thou dost review the very part was consecrated to thee. The earth can have but earth which is his due. My spirit is thine, the better part to me. So it's like the other sound saying, it's not to the marriage of two minds, right? In the dependence. So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, the prey of worms, my body being dead. The coward conquest. of a wretches knife, to base of thee to be remembered. The worth of that is that which it contains, and that is this, and this with thee remains. You know my definition of what a Shakespearean sonnet is? Well, its full definition is, it's a likeness of thought and feeling in 14 lines of iambic metameter, divided into three quatrains with alternate rhyming and completed by rhyming couplet. But basically it's a likeness of thought and feeling, right? But you wrote over 150 of these, right? And they all put in that form of 14 lines of iambic metameter with three quatrains of the alternate rhyming and then you have the rhyming couplet that completes it, huh? Now, but if the attachment is one merely of passion, right? And not a reasonable choice, huh? Then it's got a little, what, insolidity to it, right? Okay? And the play within the play, you know, in Hamlet, huh, where the king is talking, you know, if I die, are you going to marry again or something, you know? Most necessary tis that we forget to pay ourselves, but to ourselves is debt. But to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending doth the purpose lose. That's a marvelous thing, you know, that couples are engaged, right? You know? What is your attachment? Is it just passion, right? But to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending doth the purpose lose. Rhyming cup of it there, right? Isn't that true about life, though, huh? To ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending doth the purpose lose. That's true about other passions, too, like anger and so on, right? Yeah. People in anger, they do something, propose to do something, right? When the anger dies down, the purpose is not over there. The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy. I don't know if that's supposed to be not. Nor tis not strange that even our love should with our fortunes change. But that's a love that is just a passion, right? But this is kind of, you know, skeptical, or... For tis a question left us yet to prove, whether love lead fortune or else fortune love, huh? The great man down you mark his favorite flies. The poor advance makes friends of enemies, huh? These are more useful friends, right, huh? At best, friends of passion, but when usefulness ceases, you lose your money, whatever it is, or the passion subsides, right? And then the purpose that you return to the spirit ship is gone, right? Notice the contrast between that and this other kind of love he's talking about. Well, it's forever, right? So, going back to that topic now of a love that's more, what, firm, a rooted love, right, huh? A love that has roots. I think I should be getting divorced now, you know, but the love has no roots. It's like in the story there with the seed, you know, being cast, you know, it's a different point, but somewhat similar, right? But some of it sprang up, and then, what, had no roots. That's one or the other thing. And then the wither, when the sun came up and so on, right? It's happened all the time when people are getting married nowadays, huh? And would I had not known him, it was the death of the most virtuous gentlewoman that every nature had praised for creating. If she had partaken of my flesh, she should have been my own daughter, right? And cost me the dearest groans of a mother. I could not have owed her a more, what, rooted love, huh? That's beautifully said, huh? Myself have often heard him say and swear that this is love was an eternal plant, whereof the root was fixed in virtue's ground, huh? The leaves and fruit maintained the beauty's son, huh? And virtue, I mean, true virtue is a kind of stable thing, right? But the beauty of the body is not too stable. thing right and so if you try which you love something that's not stable it's not gonna be rooted but this exceeding posting day and night must wear your spirits low we cannot help it but since you have made the days and nights as one to wear your gentle limbs in my affairs be bold you do so grow in my requital as nothing can unwork you he's an image a lot in the written love Duncan is very thankful to Macbeth and Banquo who have fought nobly for him right he's king of Scotland welcome hither I have begun to plant thee and will labor to make thee full of growing noble Banquo thou hast no less deserved nor must be known no less to have done so let me enfold thee and hold thee tonight the next topic he's got one little sludge in here the number of friendships right now Aristotle will talk in the ethics about the highest kind of friendship and how it tends to be uh only made for one person uh you don't have a multitude of friends right then okay you can have a multitude of friends in some lesser sense right but there's something you give some of the reasons we'll see why he thinks that highest kind of friendship it's only between two people right and this is certainly the way Shakespeare presents Hamlet and Horatio right there's nobody that Hamlet has a friendship for like he has Horatio and vice versa or the friendship of Bassanio and the merchant of Venice Antonio right okay and they have other friends Bassanio and and uh the merchant of Venice but it's not on the same level as the friendship of Bassanio and uh Antonio the merchant of Venice uh or in in Homer there the friendship of uh Achilles and Protopas but you never have a friend like Protopas huh it's a one-to-one thing right huh okay Aristotle compares it even to sexual love which when it's intense is for one person at least I think uh it's because the intensity of this friendship right okay uh you see this sometimes even you know among the saints too huh intensity of this and friendship between them huh was it Basil and uh one of the Grammys huh yeah okay um okay this little thing touching upon that topic on Saturday April 24th I dined with him at Mr. Bo Clark's if you read the letters Johnson they're always standing someplace and but what's the best part of it is the conversation though you know um Mr. Joshua Reynolds Mr. Jones afterwards Sir William Mr. Langton Mr. Stevens Mr. Paradise and Dr. Higgins I mentioned that Mr. Wilkes had attacked Gerich now Gerich was the famous what actor uh one of the most famous actors of the 18th century huh he was originally a pupil of Samuel Johnson right and then he came to London and became a famous actor and so on my hometown in St. Paul Minnesota as a little kid growing up they had a movie theater downtown they had two ones that showed like double features and two more features one was called the Gerich theater and the other was called the Lyceum now Lyceum of course was the name of Aristotle's school but you'd find the Lyceum a lot on you know the French Lyceum and so on but uh this other theater was called the Gerich the name of this famous actor Gerich. Mr. Wilkes had attacked Gerich to me as a man who had no friends and John says I believe he is right sir he had friends but no friend now um the original text today had the greek in there but I can't leave it all because it's there but you know um philoi u philas huh kind of a Greek proverb huh he has friends but no friend what does that mean he doesn't have some real intimate close friends a bosom lover as as uh a bosom friend huh one who's in into the secrets right you know um another way scripture speaks of um the word there the the son of god being the bosom of the father right the intimacy of that friendship huh so a bosom friend is something you don't have maybe more than one or two or something like that right but since he went he had friends but no friend huh Gerich was so diffused he had no man to whom he wished to unboozle himself okay he found people always ready to applaud him you know this famous actor and that always for the same thing. So he saw a life with great uniformity. I took upon me for once to fight with Goliath's weapons and play the sophist. Gary did not need a friend, as he got from everybody all that he wanted. What is a friend? One who supports you and comforts you while others do not. Friendship, you know, serves as a cordial drop to make the nauseous draft of life go down. But if the draft be not nauseous, if all be sweet, there's no cadence for that drop. The gentleman said, Many men would not be content to live so. I hope I should not. They would wish to have an intimate friend with whom they might compare minds and cherish pride and riches. Okay? So you go through these famous examples in fiction, but also take some examples in real life. And then the ratio, Bassanio and Antonio. Now, friendship, freedom, and familiar. If you look up the, etymologically, the word friend is related to the word for freedom. And I think you see some of that meaning there, that a friend is someone you can be, what? Free with. Free with, right? Let your hair down as the expression goes, right? Cassius and Brutus are getting a little bit into friction there. Brutus, I do observe you now of late. I have not from your eyes a gentleness and show of love as I was wont to have. You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand over your friend that loves you, right? Okay? Well, that's strange as the opposite there of familiar, right? Okay? And Brutus' son. He has not doubted a word with Silius. How he received, you let me be resolved. With courtesy and with respect enough, that should be with there, but not with such familiar instances, nor with such free and friendly conference, as he has used of old, these are the three words I have at the beginning of this topic. Familiar and free and friendly, right? Thou hast described a hot friend cooling. Every note with Silius when love begins to sicken and decay, it uses an enforced ceremony, right? Mm-hmm. There are no tricks in plain and simple faith, but hollow men, like horses hot at hand, make gallant show and promise of their mettle, but when they would endure the bloody spur, they fall their crests and like deceitful jades sink in the trial. Mm-hmm. You say, well, a true friend is a friend indeed, right? A friend indeed. Go to Tim and the Athens now. Now, Tim and the Athens, of course, are the man who's extremely generous, right? Open with his money and so on. People take advantage of him, right? Most honored Timon, it hath pleased the gods to remember my father's age and call him to long peace. He has gone happy and has left me rich. Then, as in grateful virtue I am bound to your free heart, I do return these talents doubled with thanks and service from whose help I derive liberty. Oh, by no means, honest and tedious, you mistake my love. I gave it freely ever, and there's none can truly say he gives if he receives. If our betters play at that game, we must not dare to imitate them. Faults that are rich are fair. A noble spirit, they all stand ceremoniously looking at Tim and Ray so generous. Nay, my lords, ceremony was but devised at first to set a glass on saint deeds. Hallow welcomes, recanting goodness, sorry air to show them. But where there is true friendship, there needs none. Pray, sit. More welcome are you to my fortunes and my fortunes to me. Of course, he's rooting himself financially, you know, like of course. When he does, then he turns to his friends and they all put him off with some excuse. Then he becomes a, what? Misanthrope. Heater of mankind. He's a misanthrope actually mentioned in Plutarch's, you know, lies, huh? So Shakespeare picked up on this. Moulier has a play called The Misanthrope. Oh, yeah. Timon says to Flavius and his father into financial difficulties. Why didst thou weep? Canst thou the conscience lack to think I shall lack friends? Faith is the steward realized these aren't two friends. Secure thy heart, if I would broach the vessels of my love and try the argument of arts by borrowing. Men and men's fortunes could I frankly... Now, frankly means what? Freely. A name I've mentioned in Franklin, actually what it means is Freeman. He used to have a governor in our state, his last name was Freeman, right? Well, Franklin means the same thing, Freeman. Frank. Frank, yeah, it's still some of that meaning today, you know, I'll be frank with you. I'm going to speak freely, right? Men and men's fortunes could I frankly use it, all these friends, although he's misunderstood. As I can bid thee speak, assurance bless thy thoughts. And in some sort these wants of mine are crowned, but I count them blessings. For by thee shall I try friends. You shall perceive are you a mistake by fortunes. I am wealthy in my friends. I was about to find out that he's not, that he's very poor in his friends. But, you know, you read the great work of Boethius, the Consolation of Philosophy, right? That's one of the consolations of misfortune, right? You know who your two friends are. So long as you're prosperous and fortunate, you're not too sure who is your friend, right? But when you fall into misfortune, you really know who your friends are. There's something so good that reason sees, right, even in the enormous fortunes. And their fortune's not too bad. It's more than compensated by the concern and the help that your friend gives you. Not just because you need the help, but because you see that they love you. Now, friendship among unequals, and that's something Aristotle will talk about. When we divide friendship, it's between equals and then between, what, unequals, right? So the friendship of the father and the son would be kind of a prime example of friendship among equals. Between the master and the servant, right? Or for Aristotle, even between the husband and the wife, okay? Or between the pope and his servant, or something, you know, the pope and his man. So, taking the most controversial in here. The duke is saying to Viola, Let still the woman take an elder than herself. So where is she to him? So sway she level in her husband's heart. For boy, however, we do praise ourselves. Our fancies, meaning our hearts, our love, are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn than women's are. Viola, I think it well, my lord. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, for thy affection cannot hold the bent. For women are as roses, whose fair flower being once displayed, that fall that very hour in the other disguise, you know. And so they are, alas, alas that they are so, to die even when they to perfection grow. That's how it all said, huh? So that's the argument that the husband should be older than the wife, right? It's a rule, you know, there's a lot of exceptions, but it is a rule, I think that's true. My father was five years older than my mother, and I'm five years older than my wife. It's actually our father's advice here. That's what I preach, you know. I know, when I first was in Worcester there, and I was a bachelor there, and I was staying in a big house, you know, I was invited into a little apartment, so to speak, and this one man was divorced, you know. And he's not a Catholic, so he's going to get married again, I think. But he had married first a woman who was, what, older than himself, right? And you kind of saw it, this was a mistake, right? You know, kind of interesting. She was saying it too, Chris, but the next one he married was younger. But Chris, you know, it's kind of a comic, you know, a person's idea of the old man marrying a really young wife, you know, and not being able to satisfy her, you know. That's kind of a topic. Can you take a little break before we go back to Aristotle? No. We'll be in front of the topics here. Back to Aristotle. We did the first reading, right, where Aristotle was giving about six reasons why we should take this up here. So let's look at reading two now on page two of your texts here. Aristotle is going to take up now the question, what is friendship, right? And as I've mentioned many times,