Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 283
the American brain the importance which he attaches to
friendship is the most remarkable. This appears to be
a subject over which he has brooded long and deeply. It
is not possible that Whitman could have written as he has
upon this and kindred subjects if he were merely a culti-
vated brain and nothing more. A thin-blooded, weak-
spirited man may, doubtless, like Swedenborg, strike
profound truths through sheer force of intellect, or may
use violent and swelling language with little dilatation in
his spirit ; but there is a genuineness and eloquence in
Whitman's language concerning friendship which preclude
the possibility of the suspicion that he uses strong words
for weak feelings. It must not be forgotten that, though
now latent, there is in human nature a capacity for friendship
of a most absorbing and passionate character. The
Greeks were well acquainted with that passion, a passion
which in later days ran riot and assumed abnormal forms ;
for the fruit grows ripe first, then over-ripe, and then
rots. In the days of Homer friendship was an heroic
passion. The friendship of Achilles and Patroclus was
for many centuries the ideal after which the young Greeks
fashioned their character. Nowadays friendship means
generally mere consentaneity of opinions and taste. With
the Greeks it was a powerful physical feeling, having
physical conditions. Beauty was one of those condi-
tions, as it is now between the sexes. In the dialogues
of Plato we see the extraordinary nature of the friend-
ship formed by the yoimg men of his time. The passion-
ate absorbing nature of the relation, the craving for
beauty in connection with it, and the approaching