Lessons in friendship: David Hume and Adam Smith | Andrew Copson

Author: Andrew Copson

For International Day of Friendship, Andrew Copson reflects on one of humanist history’s great friendships – and on why making friends in middle age is worth the awkwardness.

Today is the International Day of Friendship, and I have been thinking about two friends who died almost 250 years ago.

David Hume and Adam Smith were two of the greatest thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment: the philosopher who taught us to follow evidence and experience, and the founder of modern economics. But they can be a source of inspiration for humanists, not just for their books. It is also their friendship, which lasted for the better part of 40 years, that can be a lesson to us.

‘A perfectly wise and virtuous man’

In the summer of 1776, Hume was on his deathbed in Edinburgh. As the most notorious non-believer in Britain, the devout of all creeds waited eagerly for him to recant, or at least to despair. He did neither. Instead he spent his final months in cheerful conversation with his friends, joking about Charon, the ferryman of the ancient Greek underworld, and putting his affairs in order without any self-pity.

Smith was with him for much of it, and after Hume’s death he paid a quietly courageous tribute to his friend. He published a public letter describing exactly how his friend had died: with good humour, with affection and tenderness towards everyone around him, and without any need of religion. He ended with a verdict that scandalised respectable opinion:

‘Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.’

The backlash was ferocious. Smith later remarked that this single sheet of paper brought him ten times more abuse than his attack on the entire commercial system of Great Britain in The Wealth of Nations. But he never regretted it. His friend’s good name mattered more.

The nature of Smith’s friendship with Hume is to be found not only in the long years of conversation and good humour that came before, but in his willingness to stand up for him when it came at a cost.

The friendships of a lifetime

I find this story moving for humanist reasons. It is one of the great testimonies that a life without religion can end in serenity. But also, increasingly, for personal ones.

In middle age, I have begun to notice what many people my age notice. The old friendships are still there, deep-rooted and irreplaceable. But new friendships come more rarely. When we are young, life makes friends for us: we are thrown together with other people at school, in shared houses, in first jobs. Friendship, if you’re open to it, can follow almost without effort. In middle age we are thrown together with others less often.

It would be easy to accept this as simply what happens. I don’t think we should.

Friendship is made, not found

In my forthcoming book on happiness, I argue that our relationships with other people are the single most important ingredient of a happy life, and that friendship in particular repays deliberate effort. The cornerstone of friendship is the art of active listening. In an age of constant distraction, giving someone your full, undivided attention is a significant gift. And if you are seeking new friends, you can let your own passions lead the way: join the choir, the walking group, the campaign, the book club. Shared interests form the bridge to new people, at 55 just as at 15.

Support and regular contact are the nutrients of these bonds. Friendship, like everything else worth having in the one life we have, is not found. It is made, and remade, by choice and attention.

The humanist journalist Kingsley Martin described the reward better than I ever could. He believed in the value of the search for truth and human happiness, pursued in the company of others, and wrote that the search is rewarded when:

‘One hears it go ‘click’ like the latch of a door when one finds the right key. It is this click of friendship, of knowledge, and of art in which I believe.’

That click is still available to all of us, at any age. It might be waiting in the person you always nod to at the station, or the fellow volunteer you’ve never actually had a conversation with, or the neighbour you lent your kitchen scales to last week.

Make it happen

So here is my suggestion for the International Day of Friendship, offered to myself as much as to you. Message the old friend you have been meaning to message. The pleasure will be entirely mutual. And take one small awkward step towards a new one.

Hume and Smith gave the world philosophy and economics. But they also gave each other something just as valuable: a friendship that made them both braver, funnier, and wiser, and that helped at least one of them face the end of life without fear. We cannot all write A Treatise of Human Nature, but every one of us can create something like that. As the humanist philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham put it, ‘for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own.’

Happy International Day of Friendship!