Coexistence

“ But by how much the higher we ascend, and elevate ourselves to the sameness both in form and essence, of first natures, and proceed from parts to wholes, by so much the more shall we discover the union which has an eternal existence, and survey the essence, which has a precedaneous and more principal subsistence, and possesses about, and in itself, difference and multitude. ”

“ When, at the birth of each individual of the human race, the two existences become united, when, in consequence of the operation of that sexual union of the parents which has been ordained for the production of a new individual, the physical and the spiritual existence become incorporated in the one being, the fact that they remain for a certain time mutually dependent and mutually useful, co-operating in the purposes of their temporary connection, does not change their essential nature. ”

“ It is the new-born consciousness in the many of each other’s existence and of the relationship of each to all as members one of another. This consciousness is born of God and these times, when “no man liveth unto himself,” whether he would or not. It is the movement of the common mind to understand the complex relations of man to man in modern society, and to forge out the science and arts of living and working together. It is the movement of the common heart to realize the undying hope of social justice and human brotherhood. ”

“ For what is love? Union with the desire of union. God therefore is the cohesion and the oneness of all things; and dark and dim is that system of ethics, which does not take oneness as the root of all virtue. ”

“ Carried far enough, this principle, which makes one's neighbor a second self, will bring to light in us the common soul, the common life that has tacitly worked in all human intercourse from the beginning. ”

“ And how can the self-same life be held at one and the same time by each individual successive link in an endless chain, seeing the life devolves but in succession, and that each link in the chain sparkles into existence and luminousness only during the short term of actual possession? ”

“ Well, first and foremost, that every individual creature shall come to its own particular and in [270] dividual fullness of being.—Very nice, very pretty—but how? Well, through a living dynamic relation to other creatures.—Very nice again, pretty little adjectives. But what sort of a living dynamic relation?—Well, not the relation of love, that's one thing, nor of brotherhood, nor equality. The next relation has got to be a relationship of men towards men in a spirit of unfathomable trust and responsibility, service and leadership, obedience and pure authority. ”

“ Now, as the members of a body, each in its proper place and functions, live in perfect harmony, mutually comfort, defend, and love each other, without being jealous or vengeful, and have only in view the well-being of that body of which they are parts, so in the community of which you are members and in the employment assigned to you. Remember you are parts of a whole, and that it is necessary to refer to this whole your time, labour, and strength; to have the same thoughts, sentiments, designs, and language, without which there would no longer exist either body, members, parts, or whole. ”

“ That fulfilment is 'the goal, not the starting-point of human endeavour.' The blank identity of co-existence in a universe is, you may say, a starting-point for reflexion; but real concrete mental coalescence between each and all of us is a real concrete starting-point of life in a personal world. The goal lies far ahead, where that union of persons foreshadowed in our fragmentary intercourse and the low beginnings of our community of life shall be won through that which alone can give it, our union and communion with God. This is more or less a philosopher's way of putting the matter ”

“ Passing over all the other subordinate connexions of man, as foreign from our present purpose, I shall here notice only his relation to his own species, and the obligations which result from that relation. All men are formed by the same hand, born into the same world, under the same circumstances, and are bound by considerations both of duty and interest to respect each other’s rights, and to promote each other’s happiness. These duties are next in importance to those which relate to God. ”

“ We have our own special powers of intellect, our own special experience, our own moral conscience, our own moral life to live. So, while it is true that we stand or fall together, it is also true—and it is a deeper truth—that we stand or fall alone.
In this crowded world, with its intercourse and jostling, with its network of relationships, with its mingled web of life, we are each alone. Below the surface there is a deep, and below the deep there is a deeper depth. In the depth of the human heart there is, and there must be, solitude. There is a limit to the possible communion with another. ”

“ Whence that instinctive tendency towards union if not from the Creator of things Himself, who has doubtless prompted it in the physical universe, as in man? How familiar the thought that the whole creation, not less than the soul of man, longs for God, "as the hart for the water- brooks"! To unite oneself to the infinite by largeness and lucidity of intellect, to enter, by that admirable faculty, into eternal life- -this was the true vocation of the spouse, of the rightly amorous soul. A filosofia è necessario amore. ”

“ Substance, whether as the foundation of attributes, or as genus and species, implies the predication of co-inherence, which is one mode of Co-existence. Quantity is predicated as equality (or inequality) a mode of Likeness; and the other mode of Likeness is involved in the predication of Quality. Relation, indeed, is the abstract of all predication, and ought not to appear in a list along with special forms of itself. 'Where' is position, or Co-existence in space; and 'When' is position in time, or Succession. Action and Passion are the most interesting aspect of Causation. ”

“ Through science it reduces the forces of nature to one force, its energies to one energy, and its matter to its constituent elements. So the social nature must find harmony in the union and cohesion of scattered, separated human beings. It must have companionship, such as the relations of all men help to make. It must have a range as wide as the world. Because of the continuities of life and thought secured through universal social cohesion, it must be able to pass and repass through the length and breadth of human life. ”

“ The soul's union with Him is a love union, a mutual inhabitation; that essentially dualistic relation which all mystical religion expresses, not a self- mergence which leaves no place for personality. ”

“ All communities are for the divine sake of individual life, for the sake of the love and truth that is in each heart, and is not cumulative—cannot be in two as one result. But all that is precious in the individual heart depends for existence on the relation the individual bears to other individuals: alone—how can he love? ”

“ Can we then have a plurality of independent reals which merely co-exist? No, for absolute independence and co-existence are incompatible. Absolute independence is an idea which consists merely in one-sided abstraction. ”

“ In the form of finite social intercourse, amongst human beings, we find exemplified a type of unity in variety, and of variety recalling us always to the recognition of unity, — a type, I say, which permits us, as I believe, to go further in our hypotheses for the interpretation of the vast finite realm called nature, than we can go by the use of any other types of conception. The social life finds room for the most various sorts of mutual estrangement, conflict, and misunderstanding amongst finite beings ”

“ Union and direct reciprocal action of several self-subsisting and independent wills among one another—a mystery which, even in the present life, lies clear before all eyes, without any one's noticing it or thinking it worthy his admiration! The voice of Conscience, which enjoins upon each one his proper duty, is the ray by which we proceed from the Infinite and are set forth as individual particular beings. ”

“ In every Regular Human Society, there is a Passionate Love amongst the Associated Parts, like fellow-Students of one Colledg, or fellow-Servants in one House, or Brethren in one Family, or Subjects in one Nation, or Communicants in one Church: So the Self-moving Parts of a Human Creature, being associated, love one another, and therefore do endeavour to keep their Society from dissolving. ”

“ The same principle, it may also be, which gives rise to the endless diversity of natural gifts among the different individuals of the same community, as well as to the different situations of the same individual, in regard to his temporal and eternal interests, during the various stages of his earthly existence. ”

“ Let us make the moral relationships that we are to consider explicitly relationships amongst Selves of the type that we have been defining. Let A be one of these Selves; a conscious life, defined in its unity by its relation to some one ideal. Let B be another Self in the same world with A. From A’s point of view, from B’s point of view, and from the absolute point of view, these two lives are, first, distinct. ”

“ Now with regard to the ultimate unity and consequent harmony of all this variety, our Fourth Conception has given us indeed a general formula. The Many must, despite their variety, win harmony and perfection by their cooperation. But this principle, so far, gives us no limit either to the empirical variety of will, or of interest and of experience in the absolute, nor any limit to the relative independence which the uniqueness of the individual elements makes possible. ”

“ The old controversy about universals has made familiar the question whether that which is truly the same can ever really form part of two different beings. How this question is to be answered when it concerns the structure of that organic whole, that realm of mutual interdependence called our concrete experience, we shall later see. For the moment we have only to consider such a question as applying solely to the independent beings which the realist has defined. Take any two such independent beings. ”

“ For how a thing works must depend on its special relations, while the principle, as we have seen, remains perfectly general. Two souls, for example, which live together, may by their identity be drawn into active community. ”

“ Hence the universal will must demand, not the indefinitely conceived or dimly and sentimentally desired separate satisfaction of everybody, but an organic union of life; such an union as this our world would try to make of itself if it were already in empirical fact what the universal will demands it to be, namely, one Self. ”

“ If, on the contrary, you wish to perceive succession, or difference of instants, you must perceive the existence of one, and the negation of the existence of the other. Therefore, the idea of co-existence is simple, and implies only the existence of the beings, but the idea of succession is composed of the combination of being with not-being. ”

“ Though there are inferior species displaying considerable degrees of sociality, and, though, the formulas for their complete lives would have to take account of the relations arising from union, yet our own species is, on the whole, to be distinguished as having a formula for complete life which specially recognizes the relations of each individual to others, in presence of whom, and in co-operation with whom, he has to live. ”

“ In short, this mutual recognition and reciprocal action of free beings in this world, is perfectly inexplicable by the laws of nature or of thought, and can only be explained through the One in whom they are united, although to each other they are separate; through the Infinite Will who sustains and embraces them all in His own sphere. ”

“ When we enter into this union, He is, as never before, the Life within us, and how shall we seek to suppress the Life that has entered in to displace our own old self-life, and to manifest Himself in and through us, in whatever way He wills. ”

“ Our view of the matter renders it necessary that the thoughts which are united in this necessity should be brought into connection in our minds. In this unity the mediation with an Other will thus itself partake of independence, and this, as a reference to self, will have the mediation with an Other within itself. ”

“ Our principles are in unison, our tastes and habits not dissimilar, our knowledge of, and confidence in, each other's virtues is reciprocal, tried, and established—our ages, personal accomplishments, and mental acquirements do not materially differ. From such an union, I conceive, mutual advantages would result. I have found myself distinguished, esteemed, beloved by, others, where I have not sought for this distinction. How, then, can I believe it compatible with the nature of mind, that so many strong efforts, and reiterated impressions, can have produced no effect upon yours? ”

“ In such a state of society—a state of nature—and in its supreme form, the family, there is no adequate principle which though real shall still give ideality and unity to the self-isolating aspects of life. ”

“ Its oneness may thus be said to be both objective and subjective. Thus the more completely our own inner life is the systematic expression of consistent purpose, the greater the right with which we may regard ourselves as being each truly “one thing” and as such truly individual. But when we remember how far what any one of us calls “his” inner life is from exhibiting such complete 127internal coherency of structure, we shall realise that even in the highest case the unity is still a matter of degree. ”

“ So in my fanciful moments I have imagined may society be, when the two great branches of humanity's noblest family, which have been separated so long, will consent not only to meet, but to meet on the same ground ”

“ Under the other aspect, the entire action which sets forth the relations of all the characters involved, of their several courses of experience as elements in the working out of the joint result, has its unity in the constitution of the universe,—the impersonal order, that structure of being itself, which is independent of man's will, which is imposed upon him as a condition of existence, and which he must accept without appeal. ”