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By Saba Alam
Man is a social animal. Francis Bacon says in his essay "Of Friendship" that anyone who lives happily without fellow human beings, anyone who prefers to live in solitude, is not a human being. Such a person is degraded to the level of a wild beast, whose only basic necessity is food; or else, he is God, who is always alone. However, he makes it clear that one must learn to differentiate between a crowd and kinship.
A crowd is not a company. A
person can be lonely even in a crowd. Bacon says that if people are not related
or engaged, their faces in the crowd may turn out only to be fleeting pictures.
Similarly, a conversation devoid of passion or love is not a conversation but a
barren monologue, which hardly has any impact.
Bacon emphasizes that it is agony to need true friends and be in troublesome solitude. Without friends, the world is not like a garden but an abandoned place. Moreover, if a person thinks that the other person is not fit for friendship, he has taken this inspiration from animals, because humans by nature require friends and company. He highlights the benefits of friendship by pointing out that friendship provides us comfort.
It gives us a chance to express feelings and emotions. Hence, friendship provides us the comfort of sharing the happiness and sorrows of the heart. Happiness and sorrows are the causes and effects of the love that humans have for each other. Bacon compares diseases such as suffocation with diseases of the mind.
Everyone knows that
the diseases that cause suffocation are very dangerous for the body. In the
same manner, a person without a friend may get a disease that is dangerous for
the mind. There are instruments to open or operate a body but only a true
friend can have access to one's heart.
In old times, the kings and rulers kept a great price for friendship. They gave much importance to friends and friendship, even at the cost of risking their lives and greatness. With the help of their friendships, they kept themselves safe from suffering and the hazards of life. Bacon also says that wise rulers who understood the works of society often made friends with servants as well.
They sometimes developed a liking for their servants and raised their status to win their friendship. According to him, they made such decisions because they knew that this was the only way to know about common people. The wise rulers became so frank with their servants that they also called each other nicknames. All the kings and princes, Bacon has talked about, had all the relations and pleasures, yet no relation could replace the comfort of true friendship.
To validate his point, Bacon gives an example of Duke
Charles. Comenius, Duke Charles's servant observed on his master that he had
the habit of keeping secrets to himself, especially the secrets which disturbed
him most. According to Comenius, Duke Charles's habit of keeping secrets
weakened him in his later years. This habit destroyed his capacity to
understand.
Bacon says that when happiness is shared with a friend, it gets doubled, whereas when sorrow is shared with a friend, it is lessened to half. However, he mentions the point of view of Pythagoras who felt that a person may find a worthy friend with whom he could unburden his worries, but by doing this he would inadvertently be decapitating his own heart.
Hence, surrendering one's self in front of even a close friend may lead to undesirable consequences. Nurturing intimacy excessively may prove to be a double-edged sword. Yet, on the positive side, it can enhance the joy and reduce the grief faced in daily life. On the negative side, such happiness may be illusory. Bacon agrees with the fact that no man, who has shared all his grief with his friend and realistically reduced his grief.
Likewise, no man has shared all his joys
with a friend and has gained more joy. Nevertheless, just like the remedies of
alchemists palliate pain, despite the warnings of adverse effects, friendship
also soothes the sufferings despite the risk of possible harm. That is why
Bacon says that human friendship undoubtedly has a soothing impact.
Bacon considers friendship as therapeutic. It sharpens the workings of the mind. It enables one to think clearly. He emphasizes that by speaking of these benefits he does not mean that a person will always get good advice from a friend.
However, as human thoughts are jumbled in the mind, discussing it with a close friend provides clarity of thought. This makes a person wise and helps him make the right judgment. Even if the friend, with whom a person shares his thoughts, is not intelligent enough, it is sometimes beneficial to share the thoughts with him.
By doing this one can sharpen his intelligence. Bacon has attempted to make the point that a man should speak out his thoughts, rather than bury them in his mind and suffer suffocation. Moreover, the advice which comes from well-meaning, unbiased wise friends, seldom leads to undesirable consequences.
He says that a person's instincts may
be biased, therefore he should seek advice from a friend. Thus, Bacon concludes
that a man may as well leave this world if he does not have a friend because
such a person is not fit to live in a society.
In this essay, Bacon has shared the benefits of the relationship of friendship. He has profoundly used analogies and examples, along with sentimental statements to support his argument.
Bacon has shown a keen insight into human
nature and has guided man accordingly. His essay proves to be full of
intellectual suggestions, which are beneficial for people of all times.
