SOCIETY
Similar are the uses of Society. More clearly than in Nature or in the Past, we see in certain other people such likeness to ourselves, and receive from the perception of that likeness such inspiration, that a real friend “may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”〖H. C., V, 112.〗 Yet elsewhere Emerson has more than once urged us not to be “too much acquainted”〖H. C., V, 208.〗: all our participation in the life of our fellows, though rich with courtesy and sympathy, must be free from bending and copying. We must use the fellowship of Society to freshen, and never to obscure, “the recollection of the grandeur of our destiny.”〖H. C., V, 209.〗