OF FRIENDSHIP.                         i ^:^i
 

XXVII.
OF FRIENDSHIP.

It had been hard for him that spake it to have put
more truth and untruth together in few words than In
that speech : " Whosoever is delighted in solitude is
either a wild beast or a god." For it is miost true
that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards
society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage
beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any
character at all of the divine nature, except it pro¬
ceed not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a
love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher
conversation, such as is found to have been falsely
and feignedly in some of the heathen, as Epimenidcs
the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the
Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana ; and truly and
really in divers of the ancient hermits and holy
fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive
what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a
(:rpwd is not company ; and faces are but a gallery of