Work as Friendship

Work as Friendship

By John Taylor; 18 January, 2006

Comments on the selection by JET:

Yesterday's selection on friendship culminated when Socrates suggested
that the greatest fruit of friendship is not so much friendship itself
as friendship brokering. Just as the purest prayers are often
meta-prayers, moments when we pray for prayer, the ability to pray
purely for His will, not ours, so the best friend often is that friend
who introduces you to more friends. Recent studies have born this out.
The people who really help you take a leap forward in life, who find
you a job, recommend a new service or introduce you to a crucial
contact tend to be people who barely know you, who saw you briefly at
a meeting and were impressed. This is not because closer friends do
not bear you goodwill but simply because they tend to know the same
people that you know. A person too similar does not have as much to
offer as someone in a wholly different stream of life. Diversity of
thinking makes us most useful, novelty of circumstances helps turn up
creative possibilities.

Wonderful as such services are they are few and far between. The real
value of a good and close friend is on an everyday level. In our
selection from Xenophon today Socrates turns to the nitty gritty, the
ways that friends reinforce one another in facing the trials and
tribulations of life. A friend is a shield against unhappiness. A
friend bolsters you in your reason for being. This is no small thing.
It has been said that depression is the worst epidemic of our age; if
that is so it is because we have lost the art of being friends, of
helping one another attain our bliss. The way Socrates helps his
friend in the following selection was of use not only to him but to
all who witnessed, including Xenophon, including me. The lesson about
the value of work and how it reinforces both love and security will
never be forgotten.

Zenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates Book II, Part VII

He had two ways of dealing with the difficulties of his friends: where
ignorance was the cause, he tried to meet the trouble by a dose of
common sense; or where want and poverty were to blame, by lessoning
them that they should assist one another according to their ability;
and here I may mention certain incidents which occurred within my own
knowledge. How, for instance, he chanced upon Aristarchus wearing the
look of one who suffered from a fit of the "sullens," and thus
accosted him.

Soc. You seem to have some trouble on your mind, Aristarchus; if so,
you should share it with your friends. Perhaps together we might
lighten the weight of it a little.

Aristarchus answered: Yes, Socrates, I am in sore straits indeed. Ever
since the party strife declared itself in the city, what with the rush
of people to Piraeus, and the wholesale banishments, I have been
fairly at the mercy of my poor deserted female relatives. Sisters,
nieces, cousins, they have all come flocking to me for protection. I
have fourteen free-born souls, I tell you, under my single roof, and
how are we to live? We can get nothing out of the soil--that is in the
hands of the enemy; nothing from my house property, for there is
scarcely a living soul left in the city; my furniture? no one will buy
it; money? there is none to be borrowed--you would have a better
chance to find it by looking for it on the road than to borrow it from
a banker. Yes, Socrates, to stand by and see one's relatives die of
hunger is hard indeed, and yet to feed so many at such a pinch
impossible.

After he listened to the story, Socrates asked: How comes it that
Ceramon, [an employer of labour, apparently, on a grand scale] with so
many mouths to feed, not only contrives to furnish himself and them
with the necessaries of life, but to realise a handsome surplus,
whilst you being in like plight with your large family to feed are
afraid you will one and all perish of starvation for want of the
necessaries of life?

Ar. Why, bless your soul, do you not see he has only slaves and I have
free-born souls to feed?

Soc. And which should you say were the better human beings, the
free-born members of your household or Ceramon's slaves?

Ar. The free souls under my roof without a doubt.

Soc. Is it not a shame, then, that he with his baser folk to back him
should be in easy circumstances, while you and your far superior
household are in difficulties?

Ar. To be sure it is, when he has only a set of handicraftsmen to
feed, and I my liberally-educated household.

Soc. What is a handicraftsman? Does not the term apply to all who can
make any sort of useful product or commodity?

Ar. Certainly.

Soc. Barley meal is a useful product, is it not?

Ar. Pre-eminently so.

Soc. And loaves of bread?

Ar. No less.

Soc. Well, and what do you say to cloaks for men and for women--
tunics, mantles, vests?

Ar. Yes, they are all highly useful commodities.

Soc. Then your household do not know how to make any of these?

Ar. On the contrary, I believe they can make them all.

Soc. Then you are not aware that by means of the manufacture of one of
these alone--his barley meal store--Nausicydes not only maintains
himself and his domestics, but many pigs and cattle besides, and
realises such large profits that he frequently contributes to the
burden of public services; while there is Cyrebus, again, who, out of
a bread factory, more than maintains the whole of his establishment,
and lives in the lap of luxury; and Demeas of Collytus gets a
livelihood out of a cloak business, and Menon as a mantua-maker, and
so, again, more than half the Megarians by the making of vests.

Ar. Bless me, yes! They have got a set of barbarian fellows, whom they
purchase and keep, to manufacture by forced labour whatever takes
their fancy. My kinswomen, I need not tell you, are free-born ladies.

Soc. Then, on the ground that they are free-born and your kinswomen,
you think that they ought to do nothing but eat and sleep? Or is it
your opinion that people who live in this way--I speak of free-born
people in general--lead happier lives, and are more to be
congratulated, than those who give their time and attention to such
useful arts of life as they are skilled in?

Is this what you see in the world, that for the purpose of learning
what it is well to know, and of recollecting the lessons taught, or
with a view to health and strength of body, or for the sake of
acquiring and preserving all that gives life its charm, idleness and
inattention are found to be helpful, whilst work and study are simply
a dead loss?

Pray, when those relatives of yours were taught what you tell me they
know, did they learn it as barren information which they would never
turn to practical account, or, on the contrary, as something with
which they were to be seriously concerned some day, and from which
they were to reap advantage? Do human beings in general attain to
well-tempered manhood by a course of idling, or by carefully attending
to what will be of use? Which will help a man the more to grow in
justice and uprightness, to be up and doing, or to sit with folded
hands revolving the ways and means of existence?

As things now stand, if I am not mistaken, there is no love lost
between you. You cannot help feeling that they are costly to you, and
they must see that you find them a burthen? This is a perilous state
of affairs, in which hatred and bitterness have every prospect of
increasing, whilst the pre-existing bond of affection is likely to be
snapped, the original stock of kindliness used up.

But now, if only you allow them free scope for their energies, when
you come to see how useful they can be, you will grow quite fond of
them, and they, when they perceive that they can please you, will
cling to their benefactor warmly. Thus, with the memory of former
kindnesses made sweeter, you will increase the grace which flows from
kindnesses tenfold; you will in consequence be knit in closer bonds of
love and domesticity.

If, indeed, they were called upon to do any shameful work, let them
choose death rather than that; but now they know, it would seem, the
very arts and accomplishments which are regarded as the loveliest and
the most suitable for women; and the things which we know, any of us,
are just those which we can best perform, that is to say, with ease
and expedition; it is a joy to do them, and the result is beautiful,
(done) with ease, rapidity and effect. Do not hesitate, then, to
initiate your friends in what will bring advantage to them and you
alike; probably they will gladly respond to your summons.

Well, upon my word (Aristarchus answered), I like so well what you
say, Socrates, that though hitherto I have not been disposed to
borrow, knowing that when I had spent what I got I should not be in a
condition to repay, I think I can now bring myself to do so in order
to raise a fund for these works.

Thereupon a capital was provided; wools were purchased; the good man's
relatives set to work, and even whilst they breakfasted they worked,
and on and on till work was ended and they supped. Smiles took the
place of frowns; they no longer looked askance with suspicion, but
full into each other's eyes with happiness. They loved their kinsman
for his kindness to them. He became attached to them as helpmates; and
the end of it all was, he came to Socrates and told him with delight
how matters fared; "and now," he added, "they tax me with being the
only drone in the house, who sit and eat the bread of idleness."

To which Socrates: Why do not you tell them the fable of the dog? Once
on a time, so goes the story, when beasts could speak, the sheep said
to her master, "What a marvel is this, master, that to us, your own
sheep, who provide you with fleeces and lambs and cheese, you give
nothing, save only what we may nibble off earth's bosom; but with this
dog of yours, who provides you with nothing of the sort, you share the
very meat out of your mouth." When the dog heard these words, he
answered promptly, "Ay, in good sooth, for is it not I who keep you
safe and sound, you sheep, so that you are not stolen by man nor
harried by wolves; since, if I did not keep watch over you, you would
not be able so much as to graze afield, fearing to be destroyed." And
so, says the tale, the sheep had to admit that the dog was rightly
preferred to themselves in honour. And so do you tell your flock
yonder that like the dog in the fable you are their guardian and
overseer, and it is thanks to you that they are protected from evil
and evildoers, so that they work their work and live their lives in
blissful security.

--
John Taylor

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