I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first-born of the world are the competitors. He proposes himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the speed in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility,--requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

译文：

我不想用轻巧的方式对待友情，我愿以最狂热的勇气去对待它。如果友谊是真的，它就不会是玻璃丝或者霜花，而是我们所知最坚固的东西。今天，在我们已经有了这么多世代的经验积累之后，我们对自然，或者对自己了解了多少呢？在对人的命运问题的解答上，人类从未前进过一步。整个人类都因为愚昧而被谴。然而，那种喜悦与宁静中甜美的真挚，--我从与兄弟的灵魂联合中得到了它，本身就是关于整个自然的核心认识，而人类的种种思想只不过是果皮和果壳罢了。幸福是一所为朋友遮风挡雨的房屋。也有人将它建造得像一间节日的凉亭或拱门，只能享用一天。如果他懂得友谊的庄严，并且尊敬它的法则，他将会更幸福。谁主动献出自己，希望与人缔造友谊的盟约，谁就如同走入赛场的奥林匹克运动员，去参加一场伟大的运动会。在那里面，世界首先产生的就是竞赛者。他推举自己为参赛者，他的对手包括时间、私欲和危险。在这场竞赛中，谁的精神中具备足够的忠诚，以护卫心中易碎的美好，战胜疲惫和泪水，谁就会成为唯一的胜利者。幸运女神也许眷顾你，也许忘记你，但你取胜的所有机会都依赖内心的崇高以及对琐屑之物的蔑视。

朋友就是我可以与之坦诚相待的人。在朋友面前，我可以出声地思想。我终于到达这样一个人面前：他如此真实、平等，以至于我可以脱下最里层的防护衣：装假、礼貌、谨慎，这些人们从未脱去的东西。我可以直率、全心身地对待他，就像一个原子和另一个原子相遇。真诚是一件贵重之物，就像皇冠和权力，它只授予最高阶层的人。他们被准许说真话，如同这是他们最高的追求和服从。

每个人独处的时候都是真诚的。一旦有另一个人走近，伪装就开始了。我们用恭维、闲谈、消遣，或者用事务，来逃避或挡开同伴的接近。我们用一百层折叠来掩盖我们的思想。我认识一个人，他在一种宗教迷狂的情绪下，撕下了这幅帷幔，对每个他所遇到的人都略去所有的恭维和平常话，直接对他们的是非之心说话，并说得极其深刻而优美。最初，他遭到拒绝，所有人都认为他疯了。经过一段时间的坚持之后，--因为实际上他不能不坚持，他与每一个他所认识的人都建立了真实的关系。没有人想在他面前说谎，也没有人想用任何集市中或者阅览室里的那种闲谈来疏远他。他们当然也会同他谈对大自然的爱、诗歌、真理的象征等等。在这样的真诚面前，每个人都不得不采取类似的坦诚态度。但是对我们大多数人来说，我们看不到别人的脸和眼睛，看到的是人们的侧影和背面。在一个虚假的时代，为了与人们建立真实的关系而疯狂一下是值得的，不是吗？我们很少能直来直去。几乎每一个我们碰到的人都要求礼貌，要求别人的迎合；他有一些名声、一些才干、一些不容质疑的关于宗教或慈善事业的兴致，这些往往弄糟了谈话。朋友应该是一个通情达理的人，他要求的不是我的聪明才智，而是我这个人。

　　　我的朋友给我款待，不附带任何相应约束。因此，朋友本质上是一种悖论。我孤独地存在，原本看不到任何我能够以相同的证据证明其存在的其他事物，现在却看到了一个在高贵、丰富和求知欲上与我相同的另一个人。所以，有充分的理由认为：朋友是大自然的一个杰作。
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