"
No doubt, much as worthy friends add to the happiness and value of life,
we must in the main depend on ourselves, and every one is his own best
friend or worst enemy.
Sad, indeed, is Bacon's assertion that "there is little friendship in the
world, and least of all between equals, which was wont to be magnified.
That that is, is between superior and inferior, whose fortunes may
comprehend the one to the other." But this can hardly be taken as his
deliberate opinion, for he elsewhere says, "but we may go farther, and
affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true
friends, without which the world is but a wilderness." Not only, he adds,
does friendship introduce "daylight in the understanding out of darkness
and confusion of thoughts;" it "maketh a fair day in the affections from
storm and tempests:" in consultation with a friend a man "tosseth his
thoughts more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they
look when they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth wiser than
himself, and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's
meditation.
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