keen-witted Frenchman, Joseph Roux, when he defines "love" as "two souls and one flesh," and "friendship as "two bodies and one soul." Friendship has been called "the marriage of souls;" and that would seem to be the light in which the Bible presents it. Those who are united in marriage ought to be united also in friendship; but unless marriage includes this union of souls, marriage must end with the life that is.

Outside of the Bible text there is abundant evidence that the richest experiences of the human heart, the world over, have tended to give the first place, and the best, to a love without any admixture of possible selfinterest, to a friendship closer than a tie of blood, and passing the love of women.

In the sacred books of the Hindoos the climax of crimes is declared to be a sin against one's friend. A declaration in the Mahâbhârata is:

"To oppress a suppliant, to kill a wife, to rob a Brahman,
and to betray one's friend,

These are the four great crimes."

A misuse of power is a sin; the murder of a wife is a greater sin; yet greater still is the robbing of a Godrepresenting Brahman; but the crowning sin of all is the betrayal of a friend,—for friendship transcends all loves, and crimes against friendship are chiefest of crimes.

Choo He, a follower of Confucius, makes a similar distinction to that which the Bible makes between marriage as a tie of the flesh, and friendship as a tie of the soul. "Marriage is the heaven-ordained relation on which depends succession," he says; "and friendship is

the heaven-ordained relationship on which depends the correction of one's character; for by it the way of men is traced out, and men's highest principles are built up.” Classic literature is as rich as Oriental in its praises of the transcendency of friendship's love. Says Euripides:

"A friend

Welded into our life is more to us

Than twice five thousand kinsmen, one in blood."

Sophocles characterizes a friend as a person

"Dear as one's life which one loves most."

Aristotle reaffirms this idea of soul-union in true friendship, saying that a good man ought to feel "toward his friend as he does toward himself; for the good man has the same relation to his friend as he has to himself." And Cicero counsels unhesitatingly: "I can only urge you to prefer friendship to all human possessions; for there is nothing so suited to our nature, so well adapted to prosperity or adversity." And of the pre-eminence of friendship over any other human relation, Cicero says: "In this respect friendship is superior to relationship; because from relationship a loving regard can be withdrawn, while from friendship it cannot be. For with the withdrawal of affection the very name of friendship is done away, while that of relationship may remain."

Nor has later literature, philosophic or poetic, reversed the verdict of the classic writers as to the transcendency of friendship. Says Bacon: "It was a sparing speech of the ancients to say that a friend is another himself; for that a friend is far more than himself."

Sir Thomas Browne speaks out of his heart of hearts

when he testifies on this point: "I hope I do not break the fifth commandment, if I conceive I may love my friend before the dearest of my blood-even those to whom I owe the principle of life. I never yet cast a true affection on a woman [yet this was published, unchanged, by the author, two years after his happy marriage]; but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, and my God. From hence, methinks, I do conceive how God loves man; what happiness there is in the love of God."

"Nor yet," says Montaigne, " do the four time-honored kinds [of love], natural, social, hospitable, and sexual,either separately or conjointly, make up a true and perfect friendship;" since this has in it more than them all. Montaigne points out that the ties of blood are of necessity, and the ties of marriage are a covenant obligation, both ties being in their continuance compulsory, apart from the impulse of untrammeled affection; "whereas friendship has no manner of business or traffic with aught but itself," it being voluntary in its beginning, and its limitless on-going being unselfish and unswerving.

It is the German Engel who says: "Blood relationship is sweet, and is what nature brings about; but how much sweeter are alliances of the soul." And a German proverb runs: “We can live without a brother, but not without a friend." A corresponding English proverb is: "A father is a treasure, a brother is a comfort, but a friend is both." Or as Evelyn has it: "There is in friendship something of all relations, and something above them all." And our Emerson sums up the truth in his characterizing of friendship as "that select and sacred relation which is a kind of absolute, and which

even leaves the language of love suspicious and common, so much is this purer; and nothing is so much divine."

Spenser leads off, among English-speaking poets, in explicit assigning of pre-eminence to friendship in comparison with all other loves:

"Hard is the doubt, and difficult to deeme,1

When all three kindes of love together meet,
And doe dispart the hart with powre extreme,-
Whether shall weigh the balance downe; to weet,
The deare affection unto kindred sweet,

Or raging fire of love to womankind,

Or zeale of frends combynd with vertues meet.
But of them all the band of vertuous mind,
Me seemes, the gentle hart should most assured bind.

"For naturall affection soone doth cesse,

And quenched is with Cupid's greater flame;
But faithfull frendship doth them both suppresse,
And them with maystring' discipline doth tame,
Through thoughts aspyring to eternall fame.
For as the soule doth rule the earthly masse,
And all the service of the bodie frame;

So love of soule doth love of bodie passe,

No lesse than perfect gold surmounts the meanest brasse."

Shirley is equally sure that there is no other love like friendship:

"It is a name

Virtue can only answer to: couldst thou
Unite into one all goodness whatsoe'er
Mortality can boast of, thou shalt find
The circle narrow, bounded to contain
This swelling treasure. Every good admits
Degrees; but this, being so good, it cannot;
For he's no friend who's not superlative.

Indulgent parent, brethren, kindred tied
By the natural flow of blood, alliances,
And what you can imagine, are too light
To weigh with name of friend. They execute
At best but what a nature prompts them to;-
Are often less than friends when they remain
Our kinsmen still: but friend is never lost.

Gay sees the inherent superiority of an out-going and on-going friendship in its contrast with aught there is in the intenser passion of love:

"Love is a sudden blaze which soon decays,
Friendship is like the sun's eternal rays;
Not daily benefits exhaust the flame:

It still is giving, and still burns the same."

Coleridge gives a more discriminating illustration of the true supremacy of friendship over love:

"Love is flower-like;

Friendship is a sheltering tree."

Charles Lamb cries out, in illustration of friendship's transcendent love:

Friend of my bosom; thou more than my brother!" Tennyson echoes this estimate of the relative place of friendship among loves, when he sings of the one dearest to his heart:

"My friend, the brother of my love;

Dear as the mother to her son,
More than my brothers are to me.

The sweetest soul

That ever looked with human eyes."