Such friendships have a sort of emotional sensuality about them;
and to be dismayed by later discoveries is to decline upon
Rousseau's vice of handing in his babies to the Foundling Hospital,
instead of trying to bring them up honestly; what lies at the base
of it is the indolent shirking of the responsibilities for the
natural consequences of friendship. The mistake arises from a kind
of selfishness, the selfishness that thinks more of what it wants
and desires to get, than of taking what there is soberly and
gratefully.
It is often said that it is the duty and privilege of a friend to
warn his friend faithfully against his faults. I believe that this
is a wholly mistaken principle. The essence of the situation is
rather a cordial partnership, of which the basis is liberty. What I
mean by liberty is not a freedom from responsibility, but an
absence of obligation. I do not, of course, mean that one is to
take all one can get and give as little as one likes, but rather
that one must respect one's friend enough--and that is implied in
the establishment of the relation--to abstain from directing him,
unless he desires and asks for direction.
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