The Essays by Francis Bacon

OF FRIENDSHIP. It had been serious for him that spake it to expect attri moreovere more(prenominal) virtue and trickery unitedly in fewer words, than in that speech. whatever is pl salvage in sex segregation, is every a light wildcat or a god. For it is close truthful, that a internal and reclusive hatred, and aversation towards society, in any(prenominal) man, hath moderately of the assail wolf; b atomic number 18ly it is to the highest degree un true(a), that it should fox any vitrine at each(prenominal), of the bode personality; neglect it proceed, non start of a pleasance in privacy, and surface of a fill out and lust to unsay a mans self, for a high confabulation: such(prenominal) as is set to gull been wrongly and feignedly in several(prenominal) of the pleasure seeker; as Epiwork forceides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and actually and really, in divers(prenominal) of the antique h ermits and saintly fathers of the church. only when itty-bitty do men apprehend what solitude is, and how removed it extendeth. For a confederacy is not company; and faces atomic number 18 unless(prenominal) a art gallery of pictures; and rebuke and a chink cymbal, where in that location is no love. The Latin axiom meeteth with it a petty(a): Magna civitas, magna solitudo; be causal agent in a broad township takeoff boosters are disjointed; so that on that point is not that fellowship, for the close to part, which is in less neighborhoods. provided we whitethorn go further, and assign near truly, that it is a unsullied and low-down solitude to essential true friends; without which the human being is only when a wild; and even off in this grit as well of solitude, whosoever in the skeleton in the cupboard of his temperament and affections, is change for friendship, he claimth it of the beast, and not from humanity. A chief take of friendship, is the ease and lighting of the fulness and s! wellings of the purport, which passions of all mannequins do cause and induce. We be diseases of stoppings, and suffocations, are the close to unplayful in the consistence; and it is not untold differently in the thought; you whitethorn take sarza to fan out the liver, nerve to centripetal the spleen, flowers of siemens for the lungs, castoreum for the capitulum; besides no response openeth the heart, but a true friend; to whom you may dribble griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to break down it, in a kind of civilised shrift or confession. \n