Note 100 — Chapter IX · RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP AS THE CULMINATING SOCIAL INSTITUTION

Among other ethical relations based on free election, friendship is the most important. In a separate Book of Friendship which I hope to publish, I intend to review the ideals of friendship as they have arisen from time to time in the history of civilized mankind—the ideal of Pythagorean friendship, the ideals presented by Aristotle, Kant, Emerson. And I shall endeavor to show in each case the connection between the friendship ideal and the general philosophy of life. I shall then set forth that ideal of friendship which is the corollary of the spiritual conceptions outlined in this volume: the friend being in my view one who assists spiritual development as a spectator. He is the faithful mirror of his friend’s progress toward personality, the benevolent yet incorruptible recorder and appraiser. By this token friendship is distinguished from the interlocking relations such as that between partners in marriage, vocational co-workers, etc.