True heart-friendship, as introduced in my last post, cannot be learned by study, nor by any words of explanation, but only by the experience itself, Chrysostom / Anthusa continues. I know that many do not understand this. It is as if I were speaking of some plant growing in India, of which they have no experience. Language could not represent it, were I to utter ten thousand words. This plant has been in Heaven!
Perhaps the reason for this incomprehension has to do with the apparent contradictions of true friendship:
Whoever loves does not wish to command nor to rule, but feels more grateful being subject and being commanded. He wishes to confer favors rather than receive them. He is not so much delighted at experiencing kindness as at doing kindness. For he prefers to hold his friend bound to him, rather than he should be indebted to his friend: or, rather, he wishes to be indebted to him, and also to have him as a debtor.
Such a friendship is as dear as life itself. This is why many have not wished to live on after the death of one such friend. "With a friend anyone could willingly endure banishment; but without a friend no one would choose to inhabit even his own country. With a friend even poverty is bearable, but without him health and wealth are unbearable."
There follows a more complicated section where the writer considers the idea that to have a true friend is to have another self. In fact, it is like being ten people, not one. So in situations of conflict, an enemy attacks not merely one, but ten. When hardship comes, up to nine may suffer but one will still be secure and prosper.
Personally, I found this section rather overdone (twenty hands and feet, ten souls, etc.), but the point still stands: the enlarging and enriching power of true heart-friendship. See the excellence of godly love! How it causes one individual to be unconquerable and equal to many.
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