The selfish and
worldly love from selfish and worldly motives, and doubtless they
receive their reward; but if we would derive the advantages to Character
that result from a wise Companionship, we must select our friends
without undue regard to the opinions of the world, and impelled by a
desire for moral or intellectual advancement. Falsehood and fickleness
in friendship result from its being built upon merely selfish or
circumstantial foundations. When built upon mutual respect and
affection, it contains no element of decay or change; and they who trust
to any other foundation have no right to complain if their confidence is
abused and disappointed.
Persons sometimes suppose themselves the fast friends of others, when
their affection is merely the result of benefits received directly or
indirectly; and if these benefits are withheld, their supposed
friendship is dissipated at once, or perhaps changed to enmity. Such a
friendship is merely circumstantial, and has no just claim to the name.
Mere juxtaposition, the habit of seeing each other every day, is often
sufficient to produce what the parties concerned esteem friendship, and
to occasion the freest interchange of confidence. The slightest change
of circumstance, a few miles of separation, an inadvertent offence, a
trival difference of opinion, a clashing of interests, are, any one of
them, sufficient to bring such an intimacy to an end, and to cast
reproach upon the sacred name of friendship, when friendship had never
existed between the parties for a single moment.
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