From “Love and Self.”

HOW truly said one of his friend, “Thy love to me surpassed the love of women!” Creation knows nothing nobler than two voluntarily and indissolubly united hands,—two hearts and lives that have voluntarily become one. It matters not whether these two hands are male or female, or of both sexes. It is a proud but irrational prejudice on the part of men, that only they are capable of friendship. Woman is often tenderer, truer, firmer, more golden-pure in that relation, than many a weak, unfeeling, impure, masculine soul. Where there is want of truth,—where there is vanity, rivalry, heedlessness, there friendship in either sex is impossible. Marriage, likewise, should be friendship; and woe! if it is not, if it is only love and desire. To a noble woman, it is sweet to suffer for her husband, as well as to rejoice with him, to feel that she is honored, esteemed, and happy in him and he in her. The common education of their children is the beautiful, leading aim of their friendship, which sweetly rewards them both, even in gray old age. They stand there, and will continue to stand like two trees with branches interlocked, begirt with a garland of youthful green,—saplings and twigs. In all cases, a life, in common, is the marrow of true friendship. Mutual unlocking and sharing of hearts, intense joy in each other, sympathy in each other’s sufferings, counsel, consolation, effort, mutual aid,—these are its diagnostics, its delights, its interior recompense. What delicate secrets in friendship! Refinements of feeling, as if the soul of the one were directly conscious of the soul of the other, and, anticipating, discerned the thoughts of that soul as clearly as its own! And, assuredly, the soul has sometimes power thus to discern thoughts and to dwell immediately and intimately in the heart of another. There are moments of sympathy, even in thoughts without the slightest external occasion, which indeed no psychology can explain, but which experience teaches and confirms. There are mutual, simultaneous recollections of one another—even at a distance—on the part of absent friends, which are often of the most wonderful, overpowering kind. And, indeed, if ever the soul possesses the mysterious power to act directly, without organs, on another soul, where would such action be more natural than in the case of friends? This relation is purer, and therefore, assuredly, mightier also than love. For if love will lift itself up to the strength and duration of eternity, it must first purify itself from coarse sensuality, and become true and genuine friendship. How seldom does it arrive at this! It destroys itself or destroys its object with penetrating, devouring flames; and both the loving and the loved lie there, as it were, a heap of ashes. But the glow of friendship is pure, refreshing, human warmth. The two flames upon one altar play into each other, and as in sport, lift and bear one another aloft, and often, in the melancholy hour of separation, they soar rejoicing, and united, and victorious, upward to the land of the purest union, of truest, inseparable friendship.