even though bought by uniform particular failures.  No advantages, no powers, no gold or force can be any match for him.  I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty, more than on your wealth.  I cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine.  Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray.  I hear what you say of the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you praise, but I see well that for all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is at least a poor Greek like me.  I cannot deny it, O friend, that the vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee, also, in its pied and painted immensity,—­thee, also, compared with whom all else is shadow.  Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,—­thou art not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that.  Thou hast come to me lately, and already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak.  It is not that the soul puts forth friends, as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf?[293] The law of nature is alternation forevermore.  Each electrical state superinduces the opposite.  The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone, for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.  This method betrays itself along the whole history of our personal relations.  The instinct of affection revives the hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of insulation recalls us from the chase.  Thus every man passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this, to each new candidate for his love:—­

     DEAR FRIEND:—­

If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles, in relation to thy comings and goings.  I am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable; and I respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious torment.  Thine ever, or never.

8.  Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life.  They are not to be indulged.  This is to weave cobweb, and not cloth.  Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams,[294] instead of the tough fiber of the human heart.  The laws of friendship are great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.  But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness.  We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.  We seek our friend not sacredly but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves.  In vain.  We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose.  Almost all people