14 July: Boreham on Baron Montesquieu

A Time for Friendship
It is difficult for thoughtful men even to approach the fourteenth of July—France's national day—without letting the mind turn to Baron Montesquieu, who probably coined more penetrating epigrams and unforgettable observations on life than any man who ever lived. Among the reflections that come most readily to mind is his declaration that times of great anxiety, great peril, and great excitement are peculiarly conducive to the formation of great friendships. It is a pleasant thought, but before it can be fully appreciated, one or two preliminary questions must be answered. What is a friend? Does the average man possess a friend? Does he even desire one? The nearest approach to a definition of friendship is Emerson's, who affirms that a friend is one in whose presence we throw off every stitch of reserve. In his company we simply think aloud. Emerson maintains that a man is only sincere when he is quite alone. The moment he meets another man they become more or less of a hypocrite. He assumes something that is not really native to him and conceals something that is. He parries and fend by means of compliment, gossip and jest. He invents a hundred subterfuges to cover his inmost thoughts.

A friend is a man who has no such effect upon us. We meet him and, notwithstanding his presence, we remain ourselves. We throw out no smoke-screen of any sort. We are willing that he should know us for what we are. It follows that, if this is the first condition of friendship, the second is that our friend must feel similarly in regard to ourselves. We must be able to rely upon him to say exactly what he means and to mean exactly what he says. We shrivel up like a sensitive plant at the merest suspicion that he is giving us the part of his confidence but not the whole, or that he is endorsing our sentiments not because he really feels as we do, but in order to entrench himself in our esteem.

Like Perfect Words To Perfect Music Set
If however, this is the supremely essential ingredient in the formation of a friendship, it is by no means the only one. It would be the easiest thing in the world to draw up a list of the qualifications that a friend, to be a friend, must possess. He must, it goes without saying, be a thoroughly good fellow. He must, in the main, share our own tastes, and in those respects in which he fails to do so, he must be mildly sympathetic or, failing even this, his antipathy to our enthusiasm must never become aggressive. He must have no fads, and it is better that he should have no enjoyments that fail to interest us. He must be generous but never patronising, attentive but never obsequious, reflective but never melancholy, amusing but never clownish, sturdy enough to keep our pace but not so agile as to humiliate us. He must be a good listener, when we are in the humour to talk; and a good talker, when we are in the humour to listen. He must have the knack of rubbing us the right way, and he must not be too sensitive to any unguarded and irresponsible remarks of our own. He must match our moods, if they be good moods, and if not, he must lift us out of them.

Do many men enjoy such a friendship? Do many men covet it? Secrecy is the distinctive quality of civilisation. Savages have no secrets. Every barbarian knows all that there is to be known about every other barbarian. Under such conditions friendship is cheap. It is easily acquired and easily forfeited. But civilisation is an intricate network of secrets. A man may live next door to us for 20 years without our knowing the size of his bank balance, the sum of his weekly earnings, or the age of his wife. The whole system demands that we keep each other at arm's length. It is inevitable that we should meet; the exigencies of commercial and social intercourse demand it. Meeting, it is inevitable that we should talk; we are animated audibilities. We therefore talk about the weather. And we go on talking about the weather until we know a man sufficiently well to justify our passing on to other topics. But the moment we have left the weather behind we proceed with extreme caution.

Masculine And Feminine Comradeships
There are subsidiary problems. For example, are the best friendships based on similarity or dissimilarity, on likeness or on contrast? Should there be an affinity of taste and temperament, or should there be a disparity in these respects? There must be both likeness and unlikeness. It goes without saying that there must be basic affinities, but there must also be in each a sense of incompleteness and of need, a consciousness of lacking what the other possesses. Each must feel able to minister to the other at points at which, with all his excellences, the other is deficient. One of the richest friendships of all time was the friendship of Schiller and Goethe. Obviously there was a fundamental similarity. The two were kindred souls. Yet, while Schiller lived in a world of beautiful dreams, radiant visions, and exalted ideals, Goethe was severely practical, walking on solid ground and seeing life without illusion. Each corrected and supplemented the other, and on these co-existent affinities and disparities their staunch friendship was founded.

The friendships of women would make a charming theme for a separate study. Women are more demonstrative in their friendship than men. Hating the barest suspicion of sentimentality, a man treats his dearest friend with the most sublime indifference. To watch them together nobody would suppose that neither cared a brass farthing what became of the other. But they understand each other perfectly; their apparent unconcern is all camouflage. Women, on the contrary, fly into each others arms on the slightest provocation and express their affection for each other in the most superlative terms of endearment. Perhaps a friendship between two men would stand more hard knocks than a friendship between two women, and, in the event of a rupture, the chances of a reconciliation are probably a trifle more bright. But this is as it may be; it is dangerous to dogmatise. Yet, in days in which, if Montesquieu's dictum be sound, many adventures in the art of friendship must be in progress, these, and a multitude of similar questions, are worth a thought in passing.

F W Boreham

Image: Baron Montesquieu