Article February 12, 1916 Issue

Friendship

VIVIAN M. KUENZLI

In no other one thing, perhaps, does mortal mind so betray its followers as in its perverted sense of what constitutes friendship. Any one can recall an instance where some one submitted to a slighting remark or offensive attitude on the part of one of his associates or "friends" without retaliation in kind, and perhaps without apparent notice of what was very palpable to the onlookers, and the judgment meted out by these same bystanders later may have been that he was guilty of something or he never would have submitted to such treatment without resentment. Have we not all heard this, and more?

Perhaps these two persons had been very closely associated for years, had learned in part to "bear and forbear," had given each to the other love and unselfish service in unstinted measure, had shared each other's sorrows and joys. Then because in an unguarded moment one may have listened to the arguments of mortal mind and believed himself to be entirely justified in assuming an aggrieved and injured attitude, must the other, in order to evince a "proper pride," retaliate in like manner? Should he immediately forget all that has gone before—all the years of loving companionship? No, not even in common humanity, much less if one or both have "enlisted to lessen evil" (Science and Health, p. 450).

Can the holding to a human sense of pride, injury, or resentment ever give the slightest degree of satisfaction to any one? Can we not rather afford to be misjudged, to be thought incapable of intelligence enough to perceive an affront, when we are learning that intelligence never did and never will see anything of this kind, and are striving consciously to reflect this intelligence, the Mind that is God?

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