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Friendship

Hugh Black

Collection:

Notable marginalia:

This book is pretty, inside and out. Besides the gold embossing on the cover, each interior page has a soft orange border. Every. Single. One. It reminds you that bookbinding can really be an art form.

But it's also possible that someone thought it looked prettier on their shelf than for practical use, since this copy seems in better shape than most other versions I've seen on Ebay.

Librarian's note:

One of the comforts of reading older books of social commentary is that, no matter how different the material conditions might be across time, the points of complaint have changed little.

Here is a book espousing the benefits of friendship between men; because, as Sir William Robertson Nicoll, D.D., writes in his review for British Weekly: Mr. Black says well that the subject of friendship is less thought of among us now than it was in the old world. Marriage has come to mean infinitely more.

Men have trouble making friends and often turn to their wives to fill that roll. What's new?

The twist to this book is that it's from a Christian perspective, with Christian aims: it's through friendship that men can be more Godly. During the rise of Christian nationalism here the U.S., what's new?

What I find intriguing about this book is that by making the Christian case for friendship, Black inadvertently shows why hardline Christianity can undermine the importance of friendship. It doesn't need to -- I think we can all agree that Christians can have best friends -- yet when you argue that the ultimate purpose of friendship is to bring God and Jesus into the center of one's life, as Black does, what room is left for those trusted comrades?

In the real word, outside of theory, it doesn't work like this. The reason men often go friendless is not, I would argue, because they are not Christian enough or too Christian. You can be only moderately spiritual and gain the benefits of community through a church. You can also be completely uninterested in spirituality and still have friends. The reasons for friendship being cheapened or seemingly unattainable among men is ultimately societal, in the ways men are conditioned from early on to hide emotional vulnerability. We are highly sympathetic creatures, who will often match what we receive: and to forge a deeper connection with others, you need to be willing to let others into your inner emotional life. When men are told that doing so is weak and "feminine," it's not surprising they stunt their own capacity for making deeper friendships.

I remember once talking with a guy friend of mine, and he stopped our conversation with, "I don't talk about these kinds of philosophical things with people." Philosophical? I was talking about the same kind of things that I do with my other close friends -- but to go more than surface-level in conversations was seen as an intrusion. How are your friendships supposed to go beyond being shallow-natured? We're otherwise just treating each other as co-workers.

Black seems to make this argument as well. He believes people in his day (the 1890s) weren't willing to make the proper sacrifices for friendship that make it a miracle of beauty and joy and only want to make convenient friendships that can dissolve with the turns of fortune (40). Friendship, he says, requires trust and faithfulness (47-8). The way to have a friend is to be a friend....Hearts are alienated, because each is waiting for some great occasion for displaying affection.(48)

If his arguments continued down his same path, this book would be a delightful reverie on the joys and importance of friendship. But things start to take a turn early on.

There are 9 chapters of this book, through which you can see this turn take place:

1. The Miracle of Friendship
2. The Culture of Friendship
3. The Fruits of Friendship
4. The Choice of Friendship
5. The Eclipse of Friendship
6. The Wreck of Friendship
7. The Renewing of Friendship
8. The Limits of Friendship
9. The Higher Friendship

What are the limits of Friendship? And what is this higher friendship? (I bet you can already guess.)

While Black argues that taking advantage of friends isn't honorable, it seems be the very reason he wants men to make friends: to use their friendship with others as a spiritual opportunity (52). It's through selflessly serving friends that a man can learn to be more like Jesus. It's through loving friends that we bring ourselves into trainig for a still larger love (a love of God, the higher friendship referenced in chapter 9). And on top of it, to be a true friend, saving his faith in man, and making him believe in the existence of love, is to save his faith in God (55). There's nothign terribly sinister about all of this. Ultimately, it's encouraging friendships, and much of his general advice and observations are good. It just seems blindly hypocritical at times, and places Christian men in an unfortunate double-bind: is one a bad friend for using your friends for spiritual ends? It's the kind of double-bind, though, that I think Christians are used to facing.

Black notes that ancient Greek philosophers (Pagan writers) gave friendship far greater weight than in his day (14). He believes this is because of their philosophizing on societal structures: for if citizens be friends, then Justice, which is the great concern of all organized societies, is more than secured (15).

It is not easy to explain why it's part in Christian ethics is so small in comparison. (16).

In reading Black's book, though, I think an explanation begins to take form: the Greek pantheon didn't ask believers to place a single god above every other relationship in their lives -- above their family, their marriages, and their friendships. By Black's own admittance, Christian ethicists do.

In this way the end of the book underminds the first half, since, while one can find in friendship the highest forms of Love, such as Jesus had with his Apostles, sin is ultimately to be tackled individually. No one should be held higher than God and Jesus. To hold friendships too highly would be idolotry (200).

Man is capable of the highest heights of love. But man can never take the place of God. (217)

Other notes and quotes:

1. Marriage, in more cases now than ever before, supplies the need of friendship. Men and woman are nearer in intellectual pursuits and in common tastes than they have ever been, and can be in a truer sense companions. (17) To be clear, he doesn't think wives should take the place of friends.

2. What is the line between friendship and romance for men? The author brings up multiple instances of male friendships that have in modern times been called into question as being gay: in one quote he includes by Walt Whitman, the poem has been certified gay, but the others can only be speculated. I imagine it's this uncertain line between male platonic, sexual, and romantic desire that creates all this tension around friendship in the first place. With sapphic love, you really have to go above and beyond at times to prove your desire goes beyond friendship. Men have the opposite conundrum, where platonic displays of affection, because they can be so rare, can be automatically read as romantic (which is also why it's sometimes tricky to make friends with men if they perceive you as a woman. Things you do in friendship can be misconstrued as romantic attraction). Not being a man, I have no answers for this, but can see the challenges even in this 1890s book -- and it doesn't help that Black uses "intercourse" a lot, not in a sexual way.

3. A man cannot be a true naturalist, and oberve the ways of birds and insects accurately, unless he can watch long and lovingly. (22) See? That seems gay, but I wouldn't think so if it was about a woman.

4. Most of our mean estimates of human nature in modern literature, and our false realisms in art, and our stupid pessimisms in philosophy, are due to an unintelligent reading of surface facts (23)

5. The great difficulty in this whole subject is that the relationship of friendship should so often be one-sided. It seems strange that there should be so much unrequited affection in the world.... One of the most humiliating things in life is when another seems to offer his friendship lavishly, and we are unable to respond. So much love seems to go abegging. So few attach-ments seem complete. So much affection seems unrequited.... But are we sure it is unrequited? The difficulty is caused by our common self-ish standards. Most people, if they had their choice, would prefer to be loved rather than to love, if only one of the alternatives were permitted. (31). Once again, this sounds somewhat romantic, but I feel this way about friendships in my bones at times.

6. To think that every goose is a swan, that every new comrade is the man of your own heart, is to have a very shallow heart. (38)

7. We make connections and acquaintances, and call them friends. We have few friendships, because we are not willing to pay the price of friendship. If we think it is not worth the price, that is another matter, and is quite an intelligible position, but we must not use the word in different senses, and then rail at fate because there is no miracle of beauty and joy about our sort of friendship. (40)

8. If we do not love those whom we have seen, we cannot love those whom we have not seen. All our sentiment about people at a distance, and our heart-stirrings for the distressed and oppressed, and our prayers for the heathen, are pointless and fraudulent, if we are neglecting the occasions for service lying to our hand. (53)

9. In our utilitarian age things are judged by their practical value. Men ask of everything, What is its use? ... Even some relationships like marriage, for long held to be above question, are put into the crucible (59). Once again, in this quote's greater context, he's arguing that friendship shouldn't be valued for its usefulness... but then goes on to say how useful friendship is to one's spiritual growth.

10. The common standards of the marketplace cannot be applied to the whole of life (60).... and then he goes onto make a business-based argument for friendship. Basically he makes the point that networking is pretty much making friendships.

11. The man who boasts of his frankness and of his hatred of flattery, is usually not frank but only brutal.... True criticism does not consist, as so many critics seem to think, in depreciation, but in appreciation; in putting oneself sympathetically in another's position, and seeking to value the real worth of his work. There are more lives spoiled by undue harshness, than by undue gentleness. (76-7)

12. Comradeship is one of the finest facts, and one of the strongest forces in life. A mere strong man, however capable, and however singly successful, is of little account by himself. There is no glamour of romance in his career. (79)

13. Influence is like an atmosphere exhaled by each separate personality. Some men seem neutral and colorless, with no atmosphere to speak of. Some have a bad atmosphere, like the rank poisonous odor of noxious weeds, breeding malaria. (87)

14. Shakespeare's Timon of Athens is a typical misanthrope in his virtuous indignation at the cat-like love of men for comfort.... He thought he had been buying the hearts of men, and found that he had only bought their mouths, and tongues, and eyes. (97)

15. The great fact of life, nevertheless, is death, and it must have a purpose to serve and a lesson to teach (117). This comes from "The Eclipse of Friendship," which I thought was a metaphor for when friendships die... but turns out to be when friends literally die.

16. All life is an argument for death. We cannot persist long in the effort to live the Christian life, without feeling the need for death (123). I lost the thread at this point. It gives Sacred Harp.

17. Death, the rude reaper (124). Never heard that one before.

18. Death is the climax of Life (125), Happy to have friends on earth, but happier to have friends in heaven, (128) -- ah yes, this is what I was expecting from a book on friendship.

19. The wreck of friendship is also a blow to religion. Many have lost their faith in God, because they have lost, through faithlessness, their faith in man (160).

20. It is a sentiment of the poets and romancers that love is rather helped by quarrels (165). Is it? Was it?

21. If we stubbornly refuse the renewing of friendship, it is an offence against religion also. Black, don't tempt your readers with a good time.

22. Man's limitation is God's occasion. Only God can fully satisfy the hungry heart of man. This feels like the inverse of Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit.