, his soul only flees the faster from you,
and you shall catch never a true glance of his eye. We see the noble
afar off, and they repel us; why should we intrude? Late,--very
late,--we perceive that no arrangements, no introductions, no
consuetudes or habits of society, would be of any avail to establish
us in such relations with them as we desire,--but solely the uprise of
nature in us to the same degree it is in them; then shall we meet as
water with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall not
want them, for we are already they. In the last analysis, love is only
the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. Men have
sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify
that in their friend each loved his own soul.

21. The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less
easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world.
Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope
cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of
the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which
can love us, and which we can love. We may congratulate ourselves that
the period of nonage,[305] of follies, of blunders, and of shame, is
passed in solitude, and when we are finished men, we shall grasp
heroic hands in heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already
see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no
friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish
alliances which no God attends. By persisting in your path, though
you forfeit the little you gain the great. You demonstrate yourself,
so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you
draw to you the first-born of the world, those rare pilgrims whereof
only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar
great show as specters and shadows merely.

22. It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if
so we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popular
views we make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and
though it seem to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater.
Let us feel, if we will, the absolute insulation of man. We are sure
that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or we pursue persons, or we
read books, in the instinctive faith that these will call it out and
reveal us to ourselves. Beggars all. The persons are such as