life. We all know that it does not necessarily do so. Sometimes it does. For it is surely fairly common for friends to find themselves on opposite sides of the world; and one knows from one's own experience, that with a little bit of goodwill on both sides the friendship can be kept alive perfectly easily, so as to enable you the next time you meet to pick up from where you left off. The real distance is not measured in miles; it is in the imagination. Two people are really far apart when a man says, “My girl-friend is a long way off, it won't matter if I flirt with someone else. She will never find out. Or if she does, it won't matter, because another face will have replaced hers”. As the poet says in Schubert's Winterreise,
“Die liebe liebt das Wandern ,
“Gott hat sie so gemacht.”
People are as far away in spirit, in the imagination, as they think they are.
It works the other way too. Because people tend to adopt a cynical attitude to friendship, when it no longer seems to serve any useful purpose, we all of us tend to be a little chary of forming worthwhile friendships. When as a youth, one has had one's fingers burnt once or twice, one begins to be more cautious. One begins to accept the conventional pattern of friendship, because this is the pattern to which most people can be relied on to adhere. But with this caution comes a stultifying lack of imagination. The conversations one had everyday as an undergraduate possessed a vigour and a virtuosity unknown in one's life ten years later. In one's youth one had the courage to enjoy friendships, but perhaps not all that much discretion about choosing friends. When one is older, one is more cautious and has more discretion; but one no longer has that lack of discretion which makes the most of friendship. It is a…