A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

In “Friendship” (1841), Emerson names two elements that make up a friendship. The first is truth: a friend is someone with whom we can be sincere. Most people, he complains, must be humoured and handled with civility, “But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.” This makes the friend “a sort of paradox in nature”: I, who can be sure of no existence as much as my own, see my being repeated, “in all its height, variety, and curiosity”, in another person.

The line concludes this reflection on truth, and the next sentence opens the second part: “The other element of friendship is tenderness.” The idea is ancient, since Aristotle called a friend “another self”, but Emerson gives it a Romantic turn: finding oneself in someone else becomes nature’s finest work.

The essay belongs to Emerson’s first collection of Essays, alongside “Self-Reliance”. The two answer each other: only a person who stands firmly alone can meet another as an equal.

Essays: First Series, “Friendship”, 1841

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