Love & Friendship
16. Self-Love, Likeness, Time and Rootedness in Friendship: Shakespeare, Johnson and Irving
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/016-self-love-likeness-time-and-rootedness-in-friendship-shakespeare/

[0:01] Okay. So next time maybe we'll we'll finish up these kind of topics and just get our mind all greased and oiled, you know, for Aristotle's treatise, you know. But it does touch upon name of the father. The Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment. guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, illumine our images, and rouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us.

[0:34] Help us to understand what you've written. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. I was reading Thomas the other day, therefore he's talking about how it's appropriate that the magi be led to the birth by a star, and the shepherds by what angels? Huh? Why that difference? Of course, the magi are pagans, right? And pagans are led to God through something more natural, right? Sensible, yeah.

[1:17] But the the shepherds are Jews, right? And the Jews receive the law through the hands of the angels. And if it's appropriate that the angels come to announce now the the change and the the birth of Christ and so on, come interesting, among other things. He's also pointing out how it's in the Apocalypse there where Christ is called the star, huh? Oh yeah. And so this is kind of symbol of Christ on this star that is leading the way, leading the way to him.

[1:50] Okay, the two gentlemen of Rona huh? In the play Hamlet, you have the famous advice of Polonius to his son Laertes going off to college, and he gives a whole bunch of advice, you know, to him about not lending money and this sort of stuff, or. But the last piece of advice was: "This above all, to thy own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day; thou canst not then be false to any man."

[2:21] So, is that true? If you're true to yourself, you'll be true to your friend and men, other men in general. Sometimes to get people to stop and think, I'll give them the passage from Polonius, and then I'll go to this passage from Proteus, huh? Because here Proteus thinks I can't be true to myself without being false to Julia, who's his betrothed to, and his oath, his betrothal, confirmed by twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths, says the play, and his best friend Valentine, right?

[3:08] Either what Polonius says is not true, or if it is true. Then Proteus is not really being true to himself. Is it? Okay. So think about that a bit, huh? Now Proteus, as I say, was betrothed to Julia, and his friend Valentine has gone to the court, like they do in those days, for your finishing of your education. And the father of Proteus thinks, hey, a good idea to send Proteus there.

[3:43] So it's a tearful saying goodbye between Proteus and Julia and we separate for a while, right? Proteus gets to the capital, so we say, and Valentine tells me he's fallen in love with the daughter of the duke, and they're going to elope. Of course, when Proteus sees Sylvia, right, then he's tempted to try to gain her some way, right? And that would mean being false to Julia, his betrothed, and false to Valentine, his best friend, the other gentleman, of Verona.

[4:23] And so you have kind of a soliloquy where Shakespeare is him is thinking out in an outward way to leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn? To love fair Sylvia, that's the one that's going to elope with Valentine. Shall I be forsworn? To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn.

[4:48] And even that power which gave me first my oath provokes me to this threefold perjury. Love bade me swear, and love bids me forswear. Okay, love is responsible for this, right? We're obeying love. Now, is this a good reason, or is this what we call rationalizing? You know, Is reason here simply the. um Slave of desire here, and not the master, huh?

[5:25] O sweet, suggesting love, how well said that is. If thou hast sinned, teach me thy tempted subject to excuse it. So, at first I did adore a twinkling star, huh? That was Julia. But now I worship a celestial sun. It's Sylvia. Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken. And he wants wit, huh? Wisdom, intelligence, That wants resolved will, to learn his wit to exchange the bad for the better.

[6:01] Fie fie unreverent tongue to call her bad, whose sovereignty, right? So oft thou hast preferred with twenty thousand soul confirming oaths, right? I cannot leave to love, and yet I do. But there I leave to love where I should love, Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose. If I keep them, I needs must lose myself. If I lose them, thus find I by their loss, for Valentine myself, huh?

[6:40] And for Julia Sylvia, I to myself am dearer than a friend. So notice the love of yourself, which is rich is rich? That is, I am I, right? I love myself. So your love of yourself is much more what? Stable, right? And stronger, right? Huh? So he says to be a friend to myself, I have to betray my my friend, huh? For love is still most precious in itself.

[7:13] And Sylvia, witness heaven that made her fair, shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope. I will forget that Julia is alive, remembering that my love to her is dead. And Valentine, I hold an enemy, aiming at Sylvia as a sweeter friend. I cannot now prove constant to myself, right? Cannot be true to myself, right? Without some treachery used to Valentine.

[7:50] So, who's correct, Proteus or Polonius? Because Polonius says, "This above all, to thine own self be true," right? And it must follow as the night the day, which necessarily follows the day, right? Thou canst not then be false to any man, alone to your friend you betrothed, right?

[8:15] So is that true, and Proteus is not really being true to himself, or is Proteus being true to himself, and this necessitates as being false to both Julia and to Valentine? What do you say?

[8:34] It's true. Proteus is true to himself, but he's true to what's not stable in himself. Okay. Now this is the question, you know, which is more me—my will, let's say, huh, or my reason? On one hand, or my what? Emotions or my bodily feelings, right? Which is more me?

[8:59] What? Your will. Yeah, the reason, the will, is more me, right? So when my emotions go against my reason or my will, if I remain constant to my reason and will, then I should be judged to be more true to myself, right? Even though that's opposed to the feeling I have, huh? What if I follow my feelings? Am I really being true to myself? Do you see that?

[9:32] Now sometimes I'll I ask students in class. I'll say, which is more me—my reason or my emotions? And very often, a student will say, his emotions. Yeah. See. And I say, it's just those crazy philosophers who think they're more reason than emotion. And but then I'll start to give them some little hints, you know, and I say,

[10:03] other things being equal, what do you think is worse, a murder of passion or premeditated murder? Would you judge? Which would you judge as being? They're both very serious, obviously. But which would you judge more severely? And they all say premeditated murder. Is it somehow you're even more responsible for premeditated murder than for, you know, sudden murder of passion?

[10:30] Well, that's saying that you're more reasonable, isn't it? Okay. Or sometimes you'll say, you know, you get angry at somebody and you say something you wish you hadn't said to them, right? And you come back and you say, I wasn't myself yesterday. Okay.

[10:49] But something was in control of yesterday, your anger or something, right? Or your buddy's in the bar there, he's about to get into a fight and you see trouble, right? Joe, get control of yourself. But when anger's in control, Joe, he's not in control of himself. But when his reason and his will are in control, then he's in what? Control, right? So that's more me.

[11:15] So I think it would make sense to say that Proteus is not really being true to himself, and therefore what Polonius says is really what? True, right? Okay. Sometimes I take a little different example to bring this out too. I'm saying suppose I drink too much, huh? And I smash up the car and I, you know, in danger of being fired from my job and whatever other problems I see, right?

[11:48] So I think about this for a while one day, and I have a little time and so on. And I decide I've got to give up drinking, right? Okay. So I choose now. It's an act of the will, right? I choose to give up drinking, huh? Now, maybe I join Alcoholics Anonymous and some other things to help me, right? Everybody knows that I'm going to be tempted somewhere down the line to have another drink, right?

[12:18] Now, when am I true to myself? When I give in to that impulse to have another drink, right? Or when I follow that choice I made to give up drink because I just can't handle this stuff.

[12:36] Following the choice. Yeah, the choice is more what? Me, right? The same way if a man, say, gets gets married, right, huh? Well, as they say, the priest, the minister doesn't say, you know, do you have wonderful feeling about her? Presumably you do. But he doesn't. Now he asks you, right? He says, you know, are you really choosing this person to be your husband, your wife, right?

[13:04] So if a person after marriage finds someone who's you know attractive to them, when are they being true to themselves? When they follow their choice of this person as their husband or wife, or when they follow that sudden passion that comes up, right?

[13:24] Well, if the reason the will is more me, you could say I'm being true to myself when I adhere to my what choice rather than to this sudden passion that comes up, right? Okay. But a little complicated because it's kind of a duplicity in man, right? This he's on the horizon between the material world and the immaterial world, huh?

[13:53] Sometimes I point to the way we speak commonly about death in civil society today. You know that when someone dies, we say he's gone. Even in the hospital, even the nurse, I mean, it's not a religious thing. He's gone. I said, "What do you mean? The body's still there. Maybe he's gone, see? " But when the soul has left, we say he's gone, she's gone, huh? As if the soul is more he or she.

[14:19] See, it's not the entire he or she, but it's much more he or she, right? Because that's what we say: he's gone, she's gone. See. So when you're true to your soul, you're being true to yourself more than when you're being true to the body, in opposition to the what? The soul. And the same principle there proportionally: the emotions which are bodily, right, and reason and will which are in the soul and not in the body.

[14:53] The two gentlemen of Verona is one of the first three earlier love and friendship plays of Shakespeare. I call them the love and friendship romances, huh? But they're more serious than a comedy; they have some comic elements in them. But one thing interesting there is it's a kind of conflict between love and the romantic sense or the passionate sense, and friendship, right? And how they can come into what?

[15:17] It's in conflict here, but okay. Now Julia shows up eventually, huh? To see her friend Proteus and discovers what's what's up. She goes in, you know, in Shakespeare's plays, they always go into disguise, like men, so that they don't recognize them. I am my master's true, confirmed love, but cannot be true servant to my master unless I prove false traitor to myself.

[15:51] He's using her to deceive him. Yet will I woo for him? But yet so coldly as heaven it knows, it would not have him speed. Okay.

[16:06] Now the Merchant of Venice, and this is again one of the three earlier love and friendship plays, huh? And Bassanio has just what become married to

[16:27] Portia, okay? And then he gets a letter dealing with Antonio, right? Problems. Antonio's going to probably die. It looks that way. Give me your hand, Bassanio. Fare you well. Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you.

[16:50] For herein fortune shows herself more kind than is her custom. You probably know the play, right? That Antonio lent money so Bassanio could go courting Portia, right, and winning her. And then he fell into debt, and according to the laws that Venice has that are very severe, he pledged his life, right, in place of this. And of course, the Jew hates Antonio, so could take his life.

[17:22] So he's softening the blow because he thinks he's lost his his wealth. Anyway, it is still her use, custom, to let the wretched man outlive his wealth, to view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow an age of poverty, from which lingering penance of such misery does she cut me off. Commend me to your honorable wife. Tell her the process of Antonio's end. Say how I loved you.

[17:45] Speak me fair in death. And when the tale is told, bid her be judge whether Bassanio had not once a love. That's the love of what? Friendship, right? Huh? Greater love than this hath no man, huh? Than to lay down his life for his friend, huh? Repent, but that you shall lose your friend, and he repents not that he pays your debt. For if the Jew do cut but deep enough.

[18:11] I'll pay it instantly with all my heart. Have a pun there, and the. He's going to take. Bassanio says, "Antonio, I am married to a wife which is as dear to me as life itself. But life itself, my wife, and all the world, are not with me esteemed above thy life. I would lose all, a sacrifice them all here to this double to deliver you. Of course Portia's overhearing this.

[18:42] I. She's in disguise as the lawyer is going to save the day, right? What would your wife think to hear that? That's interesting. Which is Bassanio more one with Antonio or his wife? Antonio. Yeah.

[19:10] It's interesting. Which is more one? My soul and your soul, let's say, right? Or my soul and my body. Well, no, it's a couple things to consider here, right? Which is more like my soul, my body, or your soul? His soul has a soul. Your soul is more like my soul, right? So, if likeness is the cause of love, right?

[19:47] Then I have more reason for my soul to love your soul than for my soul to love my body, right? But in some other way, you could say my soul and my body are more one. Because they have one, yeah, one existence together, right? Yeah, the body shares in the existence of the soul. And my soul and your soul have separate existences, right? Right. So the union of Bassanio and Antonio is like that of two souls. Like in that famous, song, I may have it in there, I forget if I got it or not.

[20:21] That famous song in Shakespeare, huh? "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments," right? You know, they speak that the marriage of souls, right? Union of souls there. Why the union of the husband and the wife is part the union of soul and body, right? Huh? So it's one way in which the body and the soul are more one than the two souls. But another way, in terms of likeness, the two souls are more what like each other than the soul and the body, Kind of interesting.

[20:48] to think about that. huh? Yeah, that's part of the rationale behind martyrdom, because I would be willing to lose the life of my body to benefit the life of your soul. Yeah, yeah. I think it's part of the order in charity. Things are supposed to love before other things, right? You're supposed to love your soul before the other person's soul, right? But the other person's soul before your body, right?

[21:12] That's interesting, it raises that question there, right? Now, Melvolio, no one knows the name, huh? Twelfth Night is Shakespeare's last love and friendship play, right? And just like in Romeo and Juliet, there is the tragedy. There is that character called Benvolio. Well, this is just the opposite, Melvolio. And they play a rather mean trick on Malvolio. And you read that play, but that's kind of Shakespeare's last one in this six plays in this kind, and and said of Malvolio, "You are sick of self-love, right?

[21:51] " Now, usually, self-love is taken in a sick sense, in a bad sense, right? Okay. But there must be some love of self that is good, right? And even as a Christian, you could argue from the second commandment of love, if you're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself, that implies there's some good love of oneself, right? But I think the fact that self-love usually has a bad sense is a sign, right?

[22:26] And that usually self-love is in some way excessive or disorder. We're not loving ourselves as we should, right? In the way we should, huh? It's kind of interesting, huh? I know as a child growing up, you know, you get the and I was brought up in the Baltimore catechism in those days, and you'd you'd learn, you know, the seven capital vices, and you at least know the names of these things.

[22:51] And they give us one capital vice: anger, right? Well, of course, anger can be good, huh? And we have examples of the anger of Christ in the Gospels, huh? Changing the money change of the temple, right? One time he's angry with the infidelity of the of the leaders of the people, and so on. So anger doesn't Isn't it such good or bad, right? If you get angry when you should, and over what you should, and to the extent you should, etc., all which are observed when Christ gets angry, right?

[23:28] Then anger is not something bad, but in fact something but good, right? If you're using my children for target practice, I should get angry with you, right? About this matter, right? Not to the point maybe of killing you, but to the point of, yeah, see, and the anger actually gives me, you know, strength to do, right?

[23:56] But notice how anger was given as the name of a vice, right? I think that's a sign that when people get angry, they usually get angry more than they should, or about something they shouldn't get angry about, or right? There's usually some disorder. Not that anger as such has to be bad; it can be good too, right? Depends upon, you know, circumstances and so on. The same way, self-love, right?

[24:22] Self-love can be good or it can be bad. Self-love, but the fact that self-love, said period, usually has a sense of bad. He loves himself, you know. He's said in criticism of somebody, right? It means that they love maybe their body too much, or they love their ease too much, or they love something, you know, in a disordered way. And but see, it's necessary. Aristotle will do that in the in the later books there, the Nicomachean Ethics, to distinguish between the the usual self-love which is bad and the self-love that is good and necessary, really, and which is really a beginning of loving another as a friend.

[25:05] And the Greek proverb, you know, is a sign of the truth of that. A friend is another self. There's other phrases that I say Shakespeare's sometimes, that a friend is a second self. Or my friend is my next self, right? You see, but that means that I've got to, in a sense, carry over to another a kind of love that I have for myself. So the love I have of myself is a source of my loving others, huh?

[25:35] And maybe that's in a way true about God too, right? Okay, because God, by loving Himself, right, is able to love what others do, huh? Okay.

[25:55] Now, description here of Beatrice, huh? Kind of proud woman, but kind of exaggerated for the purpose of the plot and the thing there, but. But pride there, the excessive self-love, is a impediment to what loving another, right? But nature never framed a woman's heart of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice. Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, huh? Those effects of pride, right? It has scorn or contempt, misprizing what they look on.

[26:31] And her wit values itself so highly that to her all matter else seems weak. She cannot love, nor take no shape nor project of affection. Love is a metamorphosis we saw, right? Taking on the shape of the thing in what Love, right? It's a transformation. of her heart. She is so self-endeared, right? That the way, the words are describing her in a bad sense, right?

[27:02] Now, here's self-love is the name of a sin, right? In the sonnet 62, sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye, and all my soul, and all my every part. Seems in bad shape, right? Huh? You know, you're supposed to love God with your whole heart and your whole soul, you know. Well, here it's sin of self-love, huh? Pride, huh? Possesseth A firm grasp of me, right? All mine eye, all my what?

[27:35] I mean, my mind, right? All my soul and all my every part. And for this sin, there is no remedy. Why? Because it's so grounded inward in my heart, huh? Okay. Use the word stubborn sometimes, which comes from the stub of a tree, right? The hardest part to get out. Holds on, huh? Methinks no face so gracious as is mine, no shape so true, no truth of such account.

[28:11] And for myself, mine own worth do define, as I all other in all worths surmount. But now, sin just comes from a lack of self-knowledge, right? The seven wise men of Greece put up at the Oracle of Delphi, gnothi sauton, know thyself, right? If you do know yourself, you find out you're not too lovable, right?

[28:37] But when my glass, meaning my mirror, right, shows me myself indeed, beated and chopped with tanned antiquity, mine own self-love, quite contrary, I read, self, so self-loving, were iniquity, right? 'Tis thee myself that for myself I praise, painting my age with beauty of thy days. The first is friend. Now that section we just finished was to loosen up your head to think about the connection between self-love, right, and friendship, right.

[29:16] And there is a self-love that is the beginning of friendship, right? And there is a self-love that is a what impediment to friendship, right? Okay.

[29:32] And you know, when Thomas talks about the man who dies for another man, right, who lays down his life for another man, does he love that other man more than himself?

[29:52] Now they take the example in the military there, where a grenade is lobbed into the midst of us here, right? There is not time to pick it up or throw it back, and one of us throws himself upon that and saves the rest of us, right? Now, is that man who who did that? Does he love his fellow soldiers more than himself? Well, he's doing a noble thing, which is good for himself.

[30:17] Yeah. If you're a materialist, you'd say, "Well, yeah, he loves the other men more than himself because he's he's going to destroy his own body, I mean, not voluntarily, but he's going to, you know, let his own body be blown up to save the bodies of the other men around him, right? " But if you're not a materialist, and you see he's chosen a most what glorious, noble, right deed, right?

[30:46] He's chosen the better part, as we'd say. or as Christ would say, right? So even Christ dying on the cross has chosen a nobler thing, right? Okay.

[30:59] So even in my dying to save your life, I'm loving myself well, right? More than I love you. Do you see that? That's something, you know. But the fact that the average person, you know, if you went down Main Street, they'd say, "Well, the guy who throws himself upon the grenade, he's loving his fellow soldiers more than himself," they'd think, right? But that's because they're thinking of myself as being more the body than the what soul and the will and so on.

[31:38] And because that's why self-love means usually something bad, right? Because you're loving as yourself, your bodily or even your your animal nature, right? If that's me, just an animal, you see. Okay.

[31:57] Now the next topic is one that's familiar to us from our study of what love, right? Or likeness was the third article there. Likeness is a cause of love, huh? Okay.

[32:13] Now, this is a beautiful scene here, where, as I mentioned, Portia and Bassanio have just become married, and now is the time for them to be going off their honeymoon. And Bassanio he sees a letter informing him of the misfortune of Antonio, and how Antonio's life is now in danger, like we were seeing in that previous selection. And Portia realizes how close a friend Antonio must be to Bassanio, the way he's he's he's he's so upset by this news, right?

[32:51] And she urges him, you know, to drop everything and to go to the rescue if he can save Antonio, right? And she's willing to, you know, she's a wealthy woman, you know, whatever it takes, right? And so after Bassanio leaves, Lorenzo is still there, right? On the occasion of this, he praises Portia for her understanding or appreciation of this friendship, the friendship of Bassanio and Antonio, right?

[33:22] This appreciation of friendship in general, right? But as you read this, you'll see the connection between likeness now. Lorenzo says, "Madam, although I speak it in your presence, you don't usually like to praise people too much to their presence. You have a noble and a true conceit a true thought, a, true understanding, right? Of godlike amity, of notice the expression, right? The friendship is something godlike. God is love, right?

[33:53] Now this appears most strongly in bearing thus the absence of your lord, your husband. I called up one of my colleagues and his wife answered, and I said, 'Can I speak to your lord and master? Oh. She's very quick. Says, "Oh, he's doing the dishes. Just a minute."

[34:21] But then Lorenzo, who knows Antonio, right? He starts to speak of Antonio, right? He says, "But if you knew to whom you show this honor, this friend of your husband that he's going to rescue of. But if you knew to whom you show this honor, how true a gentleman you send relief, right? How dear a lover of my lord, your husband. I know." He calls there in the English a friend, a what lover, right?

[34:49] Now today you'd probably be misunderstood if you said that, right? Okay. But as I mentioned before, the Greek language and the Latin language, for that matter, especially the Greek, has many words for what love, right? And

[35:09] we in English don't have that same abundance of words. So sometimes we use love for what the Greeks would call eros, or what the Latins would call amor, right? Sometimes we use love for charity, right? Sometimes we use love for what, like the philosopher is a lover of wisdom, right? Okay. And the word you have there, the word for love and the lover of wisdom, philein, is connected with the Latin or Greek word for love, for friend, Philos, right?

[35:41] Okay. So in the Greek word and someone the Latin word too, amor and amari and so on, amicitia, you can see a connection between in the words themselves between the name for a friend and friendship and one of the names for love, right? I mentioned how in English, I guess you look in the etymological dictionaries, the word friend originally did have a connection with a word for love, frēogan in Anglo-Saxon I think it is.

[36:10] But that connection has that word is dropping out of our language, right? Okay. So he's obviously using the word lover here in the sense of a friend, right? One who loves you in the way a friend loves you, right? Okay. Otherwise, he wouldn't seem to say to his wife, If you know. But it shows how, in contemporary use, of, the word love, how narrow is their understanding of love, right?

[36:44] You know. I says, "If you knew how dear, how true a gentleman Antonio is, the Merchant of Venice. How dear a friend of your lord, your husband, my lord. I know you would be prouder of the work than customary bounty can enforce you to. Well, now, notice the way Portia's mind works, right? She never met Antonio, right? She loves dearly Bassanio, right? And she knows that what Antonio is a very dear friend of Bassanio, right?

[37:18] Well, she her mind's going to go now from effect to what cause. If they love each other that much, as she can see in the way he was affected by his letter, they must be very much like each other. Since I dearly love Bassanio for the kind of man he is, I'm sure I would like very much Antonio, right? See what she's doing? She's reasoning from the effect back to the what cause.

[37:44] And Portia says, "I never did repent for doing good, nor shall not now. For in companions that do converse and waste the time together, right, whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, how beautifully said that is. There must be needs a like proportion of lineaments of manners and of spirit. We must be like each other, right? With that close? We spend too much time together, which makes me think, huh, that this Antonio, being the bosom lover of my friend,

[38:22] the bosom lover, the intimate friend of my husband, right, must needs be like my lord. It must be like her husband, right? He said she did.

[38:35] If it be so, how little is the cost I have bestowed in purchasing those two words are right together, the semblance, right, of my soul from out the state of hellish cruelty? Now, who's the semblance of my soul? Yeah, and who's my soul? Yeah. See, the husband and the wife are like soul and body, right? Now, okay. And the friend of her soul, her husband, is the semblance of my soul. right, which is another word for likeness, huh?

[39:12] You see that beautiful way it goes, huh? Now, remember that proverb that Aristotle quoted and Thomas quoted in his one of his objections. You know, Potter fights with Potter, right? Okay, because sometimes they come in conflict, right? Not because they like each other, but because they're trying to sell the same thing. Because they're alike in their art.

[39:40] I've mentioned, I think, the friction there between Thackeray and Dickens, right? The two most famous novelists of the 19th century there in England, and they were really in competition, right? When Thackeray printed Vanity Fair, and then Copperfield came back you know, Dickens' greatest novel, and apparently they were, you know, each trying to excel the other one. Of course, the funny thing is, was that Thackeray's little daughter said, "Why don't you write more like Dickens?"

[40:06] Oh. And fortunately, shortly before one of them died, there was a reconciliation, right? They're passing each other up the stairs of some, you know, public building there in London. One of them on the spur of the moment turned around and extended his hand. The other guy extended his hand, and then the reconciliation, huh? But Irving, who had many friends in the literary world and many friends in the world among painters and so on, right now, he sees this, huh?

[40:42] He says there are no friendships among men of talents in the arts more likely to be sincere than those between painters and poets. And he had many friends. He's a great writer, writing a very great story, perhaps, but he had very good friends among painters, right? Now, why are the painters and the poets better friends than two painters or two poets? He says, possessed of the same qualities of mind, governed by the same principles of taste and natural laws of grace and beauty, but applying them to different yet mutually illustrative arts, they are constantly in sympathy and never in collision with each other, like the two potters.

[41:26] And so, in his life of Oliver Goldsmith, he says he's giving this. This is apropos of a quick observation: the friendship of Goldsmith with what the famous painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

[41:42] The latter was now about 40 years of age, a few years older than the poet, whom he charmed by the blandness and benignity of his manners, and the nobleness and generosity of disposition, as much as he did by the graces of his pencil and the magic of his coloring. They were men of kindred genius, excelling in corresponding qualities of their several arts. And he makes the nice what because likeness of what as Thomas would say a proportion here, right?

[42:09] For style in writing is what color is in painting, huh? Irving's first, most famous work—not his very first work, but his first, very famous one—was called *Sketchbook*, right? But he's a writer, right? Because of *Sketchbook*, right? It's like he's painting in words. For style and writing is what colors in painting; both are innate endowments and equally magic in their effects.

[42:37] That's clear enough. So there's a likeness between these two men, but not in something that's going to lead them into conflict. Like if we're both novelists and trying to write the most popular novel in England, then we're in conflict, right? Okay.

[42:57] Now Boswell was a busybody, always trying to make friendship with the mighty and the great, and so on, huh? And it's very funny that when they became friends of Samuel Johnson, but anyway, my desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every description had made me, much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Doctor Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes Esquire. Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all mankind.

[43:28] They had even attacked one another with some asperity in their writings. Yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each. Sir John Pringle, my own friend and my father's friend, between whom and Doctor Johnson I in vain wished to establish an acquaintance, as I respected and lived in intimacy with both of them, observed to me once very ingeniously: "It is not in friendship as in mathematics," he says, "where two things, each equal to a third, take equal between themselves.

[44:04] You agree with Johnson as a middle quality, and you agree with me as a." middle quality. Middle quality, but Johnson and I should not agree. Have you ever had the experience of being a good friend of two different men, let's say, and getting along with both of them, but those two guys can't get along with each other? Now, does that contradict the idea that likeness is a cause of love?

[44:29] Because if Joe is like me, because we're friends, and Tom is like me because we're friends, then shouldn't Joe and Tom be like each other because they're equal to the third, equal to each other?

[44:44] Or could it be, in other words, that Joe is like me in some things I have, right? One part of my personality, one part of my interests, and Tom is like me in other interests that I have, huh? Okay. So one of my friends was interested in history and politics and so on. Other friend was interested in those things at all. but he's interested in science and philosophy.

[45:09] I was interested in both, right? You see, so I could get along with both these guys, but they just rubbed each other the wrong way. See,

[45:20] but what might at first seem to be a contradiction to the idea that likeness is a cause of love? Analyze more carefully. See why I'm a friend of both, but they're not a friend of each other, right? You know that something bring them together, not to see the collision or the explosion, but okay.

[45:41] Now, the next topic of conversation here on friendship is connection between time and friendship, right? And this is a difference between friendship and romantic love, right, and emotion in general. That romantic love can be like that, and of course we can believe the poets, all the famous lovers in fiction. There, it's love at first sight, the first time Romeo sees Juliet, right? And Shakespeare himself quotes one of the other English writers there, Christopher Marlowe, right?

[46:20] With Faustus and so on. Christopher Marlowe has a love poem on here on Leander Whoever loved that loved not at first sight. And so, the semantic love can be all at once, a sudden thing.

[46:38] But can friendship be all at once? See, Aristotle will say in the treatise on friendship that the desire to be friends can arise like that. You meet somebody at a function and you're attracted to them. But is that yet a friendship? No, friendship takes what time, okay?

[47:03] I noticed this letter of Johnson to Bennet Langton, an old friend. He'd been writing down to his house or something. How welcome your account of yourself and your invitation to your new house was to me. I need not tell you who consider our friendship not only as formed by choice but as matured by time, right? Now both of those points would be made by Aristotle in the treatise on friendship, right?

[47:32] The one is a friend not by emotion, right, but by choice, and that's certainly true of the highest kind of friendship, huh? So Romeo, I mean Hamlet says, talking about his friendship with Horatio. Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could have been distinguished, her election, another word for choice, right, has sealed thee for herself, right? So it's formed by choice, but we matured into a friendship by what time, huh?

[48:06] Requires habit there, huh? And a little bit about that second thing there. We have been long enough acquainted to have many images in common, huh? So very often, the friend you talk over something in the past, don't you? I had to go to my wife to high school union and how many years for those?

[48:28] And therefore, they have a source of conversation which neither the learning, right, nor the wit of a new companion can supply, right? Yeah. Jane Austen here, conversation of brother and sister there.

[48:50] All the evil and good of their earliest years could be gone over again, and every former united pain and pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection. An advantage, this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is. beneath the fraternal right, with your brother or sister, you were brought up together right in the same household. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power which no subsequent connections can supply, and must be by a long and natural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely dead.

[49:42] Too often, alas, it is so. Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at other times worse than nothing. Now, what when I struck you know when you read the account there that the first apostles being called by our Lord right, and there's Peter and Andrew who are brothers right, and then James and John who are brothers right, there's something we learn from the fact that the first apostles he called were what brothers, huh?

[50:12] Brothers who worked in a similar occupation too, huh? That's I think there's something striking about that, right? I mean, a lot of times I'll talk about how the love of charity should be opposed to natural love, kind of what build upon it or perfect it or harmonize it, right? But you know, it's the thing about his choosing brothers that we have to think about, huh? Okay, that's partly a result of what having spent all that time in the beginning of life together.

[50:53] I need to get a view of my brothers now, you know, and if someone else is trying to follow our, conversation. There's so many allusions to things and little phrases that recall things. You know, other people can't really follow what we're doing or why we're amused by this, huh?

[51:14] Now, in *Midsummer Night's Dream*, there's a lot of magic going on. You know, people getting their eyes anointed and falling out of love with one person, falling in love with somebody else, and this leads to friction between Helena and Hermia, who were brought up together, right? They weren't sisters, but they were close, right?

[51:32] And so, with this stakes made and who's to be anointed the eyes and so on, Helena to Hermia, injurious Hermia, most ungrateful may? have you conspired? Have you at these contrived to bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel we two have shared, the sisters' vows, like sisters now? The hours we have spent, we have shed the hasty-footed time for parting us, owes all forgot, all school days, friendship, childhood, innocence.

[52:05] We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, have with our needles created one flower, both in one sampler, sitting on one cushion, both warbling of one song, both in one key, as if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds had been incorporated. Feel like one body in a sense, right? So we grew together like two double cherries. You see, a double cherry sometimes, right? Stem. Oh yeah. Seeming parted, but yet in union and partition, two lovely berries molded in one stem.

[52:37] So we, with two seeming bodies, but one heart, two of the first, like coats and heraldy, two but to one, like they combine sometimes, two families, you know, and make the a little bit of my family coat and your coat and the same heraldy. And will you rent our ancient love? Ancient loves, right? Returned by time, right? Asunder to join with men in scorning your poor friend.

[53:03] It is not friendly. Tis not beauteously. Our sex, as well as I, may chide you forth, though I alone to feel the injury. Now, I have a passage here from the life of Samuel Johnson. This is the one's in the great books, right? Most famous biography in English language. And Johnson, to Langton here. It is now long since we saw one another, and whatever has been the reason, neither you have written to me nor I to you.

[53:39] To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, it's certainly not wise. You know, in this sense, friendship resembles a virtue, right? Because virtue, at least moral virtue, is acquired by repeated acts, and if those acts, you know, cease, it can eventually wear away again, right? The same way friendship, right, is developed by repeated acts, right? And then, if you're separated from your friend for some reason, right, you don't keep in contact, then you drift apart.

[54:09] You hear people often talking about this, right? So this is an aspect of friendship that it takes time. Is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage, of which, when it is as it must be, finally taken away, he that travels on alone will wonder how his esteem could be sold at all. Do not forget me, you see that I do not forget you.

[54:35] It is pleasing in the silence of solitude to think that there is one at least, however distant, of whose benevolence—that's the goodwill, right? There is little doubt, and whom there is yet hope of seeing again. Aristotle will say, you know, for there to be friendship, not only do you and I have to have goodwill towards each other, but we have to know that we have goodwill towards each other, right?

[54:57] That I wish you good, and you wish me good, and we both know this, right? I could wish you well without you knowing it, and vice versa, or even could we both and not know it, right? But friendship requires, in addition, that we know this, right? And you can see that in this case here, of whose benevolence there is little doubt, right? You can't really doubt that this friend has goodwill towards him, huh?

[55:25] Towards Towards him Christy huh, the amity, the friendship that wisdom knits not, follow me may easily untie. There was that thing we had at Passage before? didn't we about leagues and folly, you know, and so on. where Johnson got kind of irritable about his friends. How many friends, have you known form that virtue, right? But if you go back to those words of Hamlet, there he has chosen Horatio because he's not passionate slave, right?

[55:54] It's a negative way of saying that he's what a virtuous man, right? Let me not to the marriage of two minds admit impediments. This is a very famous sonnet of Shakespeare. Now the marriage of two minds is what, What do you mean by friendship?

[56:17] And sometimes even between the soul and God, they speak of this as marriage, right? Like in that prophecy. O Sion, God says I betrothed you in faith.

[56:31] Let me not to the marriage of two minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when an alteration finds, or bends it to remove. or to remove, huh? That'd be a very stable thing, this true friendship, huh? Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is a star to every wandering bark, whose worths unknown are though its height be taken.

[57:02] Not sure I fully understand all that, but. Sounds pretty good. Yeah, but through all these difficulties, right? Persists, right? Friend in need is a friend indeed, right? Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come.

[57:28] So these men that leave their wives when they get... When those rosy lips and cheeks. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, huh? But bears it out even to the edge of doom, Judgment Day, right?

[57:46] What Shakespeare's talking about here is true love. It's forever, right? And that's why he says, "be in me now, right? If this be the error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved." Can say it better than he.

[58:03] Shakespeare says things so well they can't prove upon them. Sign seventy-four again, of the friendship. But it's going to bring out again that the friendship is more in the between soul and soul, right, than between body and body, right. But be contented when that fellow rest without all bail shall carry me away, huh? Competitive. Carried off to jail. My life hath in this line some interest which for memorials still with thee shall stay.

[58:41] When thou reviewest this, thou dost review the very part was consecrated to thee. The earth can have but earth, which is his due. My spirit is thine, the better part to me. So it's like the other sound saying, it's, not to the marriage of two minds, right? Independent. So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, the prey of worms. My body being dead, the coward conquest. Of a wretch's knife, to base of thee to be remembered.

[59:12] The worth of that is that which it contains, and that is this, and this with thee remains. Is my definition of what a Shakespearean sonnet is? Well, its full definition is it's a likeness, huh, of thought and feeling, in fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, divided into three quatrains with alternate rhyming, and completed by rhyming couplet. But basically, it's a likeness of thought and feeling, right? But you wrote over 150 of these, right?

[59:46] And they're all put in that form of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter with three quatrains with alternate rhyming, and then you have the rhyming couplet that completes it, huh?

[1:00:02] Now, but if the attachment is one merely of passion, right, and not a reasonable choice, huh, then it's got a little what insolidity to it, right? Okay. And the play within the play, you know, that in Hamlet, huh, where the king is talking, you know, if I die, you're going to marry again or something, you know. Most necessary 'tis that we forget to pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.

[1:00:32] What to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending doth the purpose lose. That's a marvelous thing, you know, that couples are engaged, right? You know, what is your attachment? It's just passion, right? What to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending doth the purpose lose. Rhyming couplet, there, right? Isn't that true about life, though, huh?

[1:01:03] To ourselves in passion we propose the passion ending doth the purpose lose. That's true about other passions too, like anger and so on, right? Yeah. People in anger, they do something. Propose to do something, right? And angry dies down. Purpose no longer there.

[1:01:24] The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy. I don't know if that's supposed to be not. Nor 'tis not, nor nor 'tis not strange that even our love should with our fortunes change. But that's a love that is just a passion, right?

[1:01:48] But this is kind of you know skeptical, huh? For 'tis a question left us yet to prove whether love leads fortune or else fortune love, huh? The great man down you mark his favorite flies. The poor advance makes friends of enemies, huh? But these are more useful friends, right? Huh? At best, friends of passion. But when usefulness ceases, you lose your money, or it is, or the passion subsides, right?

[1:02:18] Then the purpose that you do this relationship is gone, right? Notice the contrast between that and this other kind of love he's talking about, where it's forever, right?

[1:02:35] So, going back to that topic now of a love that's more what? Firm, a rooted love, right? A love that has roots. You got

[1:02:47] people getting divorced now, you know, but the love has no roots. It's like, like in the story there, the seed, you know, being cast. You know, it's a different point, but somewhat similar, right? But some of it sprang up and then what? Had no roots. That's one of the thing. And then the withered when the sun came up and so on, right? What's happened all the time with people getting married nowadays, huh?

[1:03:18] I would, I had not known him. It was the death of the most virtuous gentlewoman that ever nature had praised for creativity. If she had partaken of my flesh, she should have been my own daughter, right? And cost me the dearest groans of a mother. I could not have owed her a more what? Rooted love. Huh? Simply said, huh?

[1:03:44] Myself have often heard him say and swear that this his love was an eternal plant, whereof the root was fixed in virtue's ground. Huh? The leaves and fruit maintained by beauty's sun. Huh?

[1:04:00] And virtue, if it's true, virtue is a kind of stable thing, right? But the beauty of the body is not too stable. a Thing right, and

[1:04:13] so if you tie what you love in something that's not stable, it's not going to be rooted. But this exceeding posting day and night must wear your spirits low. We cannot help it. But since you have made the days and nights as one to wear your gentle limbs in my affairs, be bold; you do so grow in my requital, as nothing can unroot you. He's an image a lot, rooted a lot.

[1:04:47] Duncan is very thankful to Macbeth and Banquo who have fought nobly for him. Right, King of Scotland. Welcome hither. I have begun to plant thee, and will labor to make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo, thou hast no less deserved, nor must be known, no less to have done so. Let me enfold thee and hold thee to my heart.