FRIENDS, ACTIVE AND PASSIVE.
E was an active friend." These honorific words are
„H to be found on a monument of the year 1810 erected to a Somersetsbire worthy. Amongst a list of faded conventional flatteries, the little phrase stands out with all the distinction of truth. A man whose friends were sure of his service! The careless passer-by still spares him a kind thought, and is set reflecting upon the difference between active and passive friendship. The words "active" and " passive " in this connexion are not necessarily synonymous with "selfish 'S and "unselfish," though at first sight they might appear to be so. There are a few actively unselfish men and women who are not capable of any friendship which could be described as other than passive. They sacrifice themselves willingly for causes, and are often people of the highest principle. Duty and religious devotion awake their enthusiasm. Reform and charity, patriotism and humanitarianism, stir them to acticn. But for individuals they have little feeling. The world for them consists not of men and women, but of groups and classes. Ages ago the
more spiritually minded among them went into monasteries and convents, unconsciously enabled • to do so by the fact that they did not care enough for any one in particular to keep them outside. So they joined themselves to a society in which all individuality was discouraged, and prayed for the world at large. But not all cause-lovers are of a theological turn of mind. To-day an enormous choice of altars is presented before those who desire to sacrifice themselves for an abstract idea ; aud putting aside cynicism, they attract some of the best people in the world, some of those without whom the world could not get on at all. Many of those for whom individuals hardly exist, hardly exist themselves as individuals. They are entirely unselfish ; they are willing to give away everything they have, everything the world holds dear. Perhaps the alabaster box of New Testament fame is the only thing they never give. Individual ties and claims leave them cold. They conceive of "the poor" as a colossal dirty and suffering abstraction—if such a contradiction in terms may be permitted us—for whose good they are prepared to live or die. Or some great " wrong " calls out all their energies, and not all the " rights " in the world will enable them to see it in proportion. Or they serve art as a mistress or science as a god, and their friends are nothing but potential converts or illustrations of a theory, and they are able to accept their misfortunes or removal with something which simple people who tremble at the contemplation of such blows describe very often as "courage." They are "detached," in the sense in which Ignatius Loyola used the word. They are few, but, as be said, their power cannot be computed. They do move the world, and form an eternal modification to the beautiful generalisation which declares that it is love only which keeps it in motion.
This is the noblest stuff out of which "passive friends" are made. There are, of course, plenty of an inferior description ; for instance, those who cultivate friendship for what they can get and look to make no return. We do not mean mere cupboard-lovers in the material sense—they must be considered incapable of friendship, however wide their acquaintance or numerous their intimates—but such men and women as desire sympathy and value new ideas, but, having no fervour in their natures, remain passive when they might bestow help on others. There is sometimes a remarkable geniality about these "passive friends." They are well disposed towards the whole world, and are happy in the thought that they wish well towards all men. Then there are certain "passive friends" whose usefulness to those for whom they have a real regard has been through life nullified by a comfort- able acquiescence in a wretchedly poor opinion of themselves. They have no wealth, they reflect ; no special influence, perhaps no great physical strength. They have no aptitude for sacrifice, they say ; they were never cut out for martyrs ; and, paralysed by a sort of humble sloth, they lose all power of friendly activity. Again, there are a few quite good and friendly people who have determined, not without a certain worldly wisdom, to keep off the stage of life as much as possible. They look on with keen interest at the struggles and successes of their friends, but their cardinal rule is not to "mix themselves up" in matters the exact rights and wrongs of which they feel they will never understand. They " interpose " nowhere, they espouse no one's quarrel, they keep on their own way always, and congratulate themselves as they get on in life that they have made no enemies, and are disturbed by fewer and fewer applications for help in any form.
It takes a great many people, however, to make up a world. They cannot be accurately differentiated under labels. Willing- ness to help is by no means always a measure of friendly feeling. One comes occasionally across stray men, or at any rate stray women, who do an infinitude of active kindnesses towards individuals, and who can hardly be described as having any friends at all. They have an extraordinary predilection for lame dogs, and the getting of them over stiles is their occupation in life. Pity is the strongest of their passions, and they love to play Providence. Every ordinary person whom they see in pain is for the time transfigured by his sufferings. They do not care much about gratitude, and throw away the affection which their kindness evokes. When the dog is no longer to be helped, when he can jump and ran again, they do not want to see any more of him. They do not scruple to reflect that he was ill-bred, or fierce, or cringing. They are born benefactors, but they have no genius fer friendship. Their charity is always sweet to receive, but often bitter to remember.
Of course, there are some born benefactors who by their own act of kindness create in themselves a feeling of true friendship. These are, perhaps, the highest moral natures in the world. They draw upon an inexhaustible source of good- ness the force of which is enlarged as the demand increases. There are the "natural Christians" of the world, the salt of the earth, an essential, but not a large, ingredient in the composition of all societies.
All the most delightful people in every class and country may be described as "active friends," but many pitfalls lie open before them, even sometimes moral pitfalls, which the " passive " type know nothing about. They are sure ocea- sionally to regret having meddled in what was no immediate concern of theirs, sure sometimes to put themselves in the wrong by standing by some one whom they liked so well that they thought he could be nowhere but in the right. Probably at some time or other in their lives they have to feel heartily ashamed of a "job" which they might have known, had their eyes not been blinded by friendship, would turn out badly, and they are likely now and then to regret ineffectually, but without ceasing, an act of impetuous kindness which has involved an unforeseen cruelty.
Of the greater number of active friends it may, perhaps, also be said that they are somewhat bound up in their friend- ships. They do not set out to seek objects of benevolence, or, if they do, it is out of a conscientious desire to do right, and often somewhat wearily. It is, however, no effort to them to do good to those they care for. When they act for their friends they act as they would act for themselves, for it is by the alchemy of affection, and not by any principle or any abstract enthusiasm, that the strong spring of selfishness which seems to lie at the root of human character is oftenest transformed from an egoistic to an altruistic force.
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