Change and the Laws of Nature Theme Analysis

Emerson’s insists throughout “Friendship” that true friendship is part of nature, governed by the same forces that animate the natural world. The chief law of nature, and accordingly of friendship, is change—change that is much slower and more meaningful than the rapid formation and disappearance of superficial human connections. True friendship unfolds at the much slower pace of geologic and biological time. Just like the renewal of plants, or the alternation of electric charge, the soul is renewed and enhanced through alternation between friendship and solitude. Because the world is perceived through the soul, friendship also changes the world as it is perceived by an individual. 

As opposed to the rapid formation and constant change that characterize normal friendships, true friendships are formed slowly and gradually, over the longer time scale of the divine forces that animate nature. Thus, true and meaningful friendships are more solid and constant than shallow acquaintanceships. Friendship requires “a long probation,” for, Emerson writes, people should not “desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them” through “rash personal relations.” There is a risk that through overhasty connection, a soul may actually be compromised. The pace of true friendship is the pace of nature. Instead of the rapid pace at which normal friends are made, a true friend must respect the naturlangsamkeit—literally, the “slowness of nature”—of geological time. Throughout the essay, Emerson draws upon the imagery of the natural world to describe the nature of friendship, showing that friendship is part of nature, not just human experience, and is governed by natural laws rather than human choices. Emerson writes that friendship occurs according to the pace of nature, “which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration, in which the Alps and Andes come and go as rainbows.” Whereas much of human life is rapid and fleeting, friendship develops slowly, and is a way in which humans participate in a natural order that is beyond the scope of human knowledge and will.

According to Emerson, the human soul is part of nature, and governed by nature’s tendency to change. Due to this natural fluidity of the soul, friendships inevitably change over time—sometimes the soul prefers company, sometimes solitude, sometimes one particular friend, sometimes another. The coming and going of friends is like the growth of leaves throughout the changing seasons. The soul “puts forth friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf.” Because the soul changes, friends also change. For, Emerson writes, other people are part of the world he experiences. “Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,” Emerson writes to his friend. Like all things, even true friends come and go. In fact, “The law of nature is alternation for evermore.” Just as positive and electric charges attract their opposites, the soul surrounds itself with friends only enter into “a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.” In other words, the alternation between solitude and society is productive and necessary, as are the regenerating cycles that animate nature.

As the soul naturally changes over time, one’s perceptions of the world and the people within it are modified. Thus, Emerson argues that true friends should be kept at a distance so that one can get to know them for who they truly are, not who one perceives the friend to be at any given moment. The affection that forms the basis of friendship changes the world, as a person perceives it. “The earth is metamorphosed” when one encounters a person with whom one feels deep connection. Similarly, one partially constructs one’s friends, interacting with a certain idea of who the friend is. “Fancy enhances,” Emerson writes, and people admire what they want to admire in their friends. When one gets to know someone better, what one admires in another person may change—or one may cease to admire that person altogether. Emerson suggests that this is one reason why there needs to be distance between friends—if one gets to know someone too intimately, not as another autonomous self in the world, but as merely another person, friendship will no longer be possible. Emerson compares the qualities of a person to “the hues of the opal, the light of the diamond,” which “are not to be seen, if the eye is too near.” Just as one must have some distance from a gemstone in order to appreciate its luster, so must one preserve distance between oneself and another in order to fully appreciate the other person.

Friendship ties directly into Emerson’s characteristically Transcendentalist view of nature as teeming with growth and change and, at the same time, animated at a deep level by an unchanging divinity. The two contrary elements—change and constancy—come together in friendship, which unfolds on a geologic timescale according to natural laws beyond human control.  Friendship allows people to escape the rapid pace of life to consider reality, and their lives, from the perspective of the divine. Friendship can therefore transform the superficial aspects of human life from mere “drudgery” with the “rhyme and reason” of philosophy.