“Friendship … has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gave value to survival.” -C.S. Lewis
by Maria Popova
Oxford professor, beloved artist, Spirit-empowered intellectual and loyal friend.
“What is so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling?” Emerson marveled in his exquisite meditation on friendship. But what, exactly, is at the heart of this “just and firm encounter”?
In his insightful 1960 book The Four Loves (public library), C.S. Lewis picks up where Aristotle left off and examines the differences between the four main categories of intimate human bonds — affection, the most basic and expressive; Eros, the passionate and sometimes destructive desire of lovers; charity, the highest and most unselfish spiritual connection; and friendship, the rarest, least jealous, and most profound relation.
In one of the most beautiful passages, he considers how friendship differs from the other three types of love by focusing on its central question: “Do you see the same truth.”
Lewis writes:
Lovers seek for privacy. Friends find this solitude about them, this barrier between them and the herd, whether they want it or not…
