Interdependence

“ This principle, he said, was but another name for the inter-dependence, coöperation, mutual trust, which had been the root of all real human progress—without which human beings must have remained a race of selfish and warring savages, little better than beasts of prey. ”

“ Let us put on one side political life, local and national interests, all that sphere of mixed social relations, which is so imperfect, so full of fierce passions, of strife, envy, and ambition, so productive of distractions and entanglements. ”

“ And the common weapons, or for quite general purposes, the common forms in which a conflict or an opposition is expressed, as if the hiding-place of unity, perhaps a sleeping unity, only indicate in the very differences a basis, a potential of agreement, even an earnest of an underlying and sometimes awakening accord. So, truly, in life at large extremes do meet. But commonly men recognize at most only that they meet, without realizing that their difference is intrinsic to a real unity. ”

“ With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have, in a common cause, fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels and joint efforts—of common dangers, sufferings, and successes. ”

“ What this country needs above all else is peace, concord, and union between all the elements composing its population. Let us show the world that if we reverence the past, we also have a regard for the future. ”

“ I answer generally, That independence being a single, simple line, contained within ourselves, and reconciliation a matter exceedingly perplexed and complicated, and in which a treacherous, capricious court is to interfere, gives the answer without a doubt.... Instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion, shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension. ”

“ At the present moment the Empire is being attacked on all sides, and in our isolation we must look to ourselves. We must draw closer our internal relations, the ties of sentiment, the ties of sympathy—yes, and the ties of interest. ”

“ Simply throughout this life of ours there has been and there can be no idealism without conflict and no conflict, whatever the issue or the manner, without common weapons, which means, too, without some common relationship and some common interest. As for the idealism, too, what is it but a demand for real unity? ”

“ Your interests are the same, and in your inmost hearts your principles are the same—why should you not be true to each other? Let this alliance spread and flourish all over this State, all over this Republic—and the cause of liberty will triumph and our honor will be safe! ”

“ He therefore recommends to you, as the safest and surest road to consequence and fame, to effect, without loss of time, a perfect reconciliation with your friends and fellow-settlers; convincing them, by your mildness and generosity, and still more by a strict attention to justice, that you are worthy of their confidence; exert all your powers in establishing perfect union and friendship among your own nation, and you will convince those at a distance that you are capable and worthy of cementing a general union for good purposes. ”

“ But, then, we are indeed living in a totalitarian world, a world of totality, of spiritual unity and collective responsibility, before which all sovereignties have to abdicate. Unity is the word of the historic hour. The world wants to become one, all the way, into practical reality, down to economic matters. ”

“ Let the lovers of discord, and the promoters of bloodshed between nations, divided only by a name and a channel, rather reflect, that this world, the whole of the planet called earth, is the common country of all who live and breathe upon it, if the title of one's country is allowed to be a sufficient reason for unity among fellow-countrymen; and let them also remember, that all men, however distinguished by political or accidental causes, are sprung from the same parents, if consanguinity and affinity are allowed to be available to concord and peace. ”

“ Let us not play tricks in secret to gain points, we civilized nations, but be frank with each other. Let us not try to irritate each other or to influence our people, but to realize how much we have in common and that our only purpose is common progress and happiness. ”

“ What have we gained? What have we not lost by our alliance with them? Are not their principles, their pursuits, their policies, their interests, their designs, their feelings, utterly diverse from ours? ”

“ We mean a principle of sympathy, not of hostility; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common interest among those who live under the same government, and are contained within the same natural or historical boundaries. ”

“ Even as my descent into this world was for the regulation of the affairs of your community, so is my existence of equal advantage to you, and I will at all times be with you, never absent from you. Even in the other world will I be with you. Here below, separation is a thing unavoidable. In the other world there is union without disrupture, and junction without a parting. ”

“ In the prosecution of these chances we all owe to each other good-will, mutual respect, and mutual guarantees of liberty and security. Beyond this nothing can be affirmed as a duty of one group to another in a free state. ”

“ And so, in encouraging and assisting other peoples to be free on the basic principle of mutuality in the solution of our common social, economic, and cultural problems, we help to advance our own national interests. ”

“ That our ideals have conquered the greater part of the world, creating strong bonds of solidarity between the peoples who are impregnated with them, permitting us to face with confidence the creation of the league of nations which will assure to the world an era of happiness in freedom through law. ”

“ The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so far as agreements have modified it. ”

“ What should we think of a community of slaves, who betrayed each other's interests 1 of a little band of shipwrecked mariners upon a friendless shore, who were false to each other? of the inhabitants of a defenceless nation, who would not unite together in earnestness and good faith against a common enemy? We are accustomed to hear of the meanness of the powerful, when they forsake the weak; but there is a meanness of a lower grade—when the weak forsake each other. ”

“ Communities so remote from each other as those which compose the Empire, it is said again, 'cannot have those common interests which are necessary to give cohesion to a nation.' Let us consider the point. ”

“ And this is civilization—a process by which{241}
THE AUDITORIUM HOTEL. the citizens of each State, foreign as well as domestic, will learn their inter-dependence upon each other. Many will come from selfish motives, possibly, but the social atmosphere they will here breathe; that undefinable influence which pervades and affects people who come together in masses with a common purpose, will broaden them and teach them that discussion and not violence is the proper way to adjust differences or promote objects—and thus prepare humanity for that good time so long coming. ”

“ If you are going to keep the people who populate that territory together, if you are going to keep them of one heart and one mind, if you are going to make them keep step to this Union and to the progress of this nation, you must have frequent intercourse with them all. ”

“ Let each one of us, each class, each sect, each nation, each group of nations, do all that is humanly possible to foster that spirit, to further mutual {267} understanding, to breed confidence in one another, and to co-operate for the weal of all. ”

“ How strange, then, that unity is regarded as a goal to be attained, if at all, in a distant future, after a host of disorders in social, political, economic and moral life have been addressed and somehow or other resolved. ”

“ The accursed spirits, by whom the concord between heaven and human beings was originally interrupted, and to this day continues interrupted, hold union with one another, and preserve their usurped power, such as it is, by unanimity! [1]
Yet man to man, whom, of all created beings, concord would most become, and who stands most in need of it, neither nature, so powerful and irresistible in every thing else, can reconcile; neither human compacts unite ”

“ As in private life, my lords, when two friends carry any dispute between them to improper degrees of anger or resentment, it is the province of a third to moderate the passion of each, and to restore that benevolence which a difference of interest or opinion had impaired; so in alliances, or the friendships of nations, whenever it unhappily falls out that two of them forget the general good, and lay themselves open to those evils from which a strict union only can preserve them, it is necessary that some other power should interpose, and prevent the dangers of a perpetual discord. ”

“ Thanks to these men, efforts are co-ordinated and an understanding is maintained at all points of the front, so that the chain of unity holds together. If one falls, there is at once another to take his place. ”

“ The schools of philosophy, and the infallible creeds, founded upon authority to the exclusion of all mental and spiritual freedom, have never ceased to be at war with one another, and instead of labouring for that union which is strength,—that union so necessary to the happiness and advancement of humanity,—they have everywhere sown irreconcilable antipathies and bloody discords. ”

“ At each step, the relations of the people have extended, multiplied, and complicated. Their union has been strengthened; they have been brought nearer together; they have had more interests and more labors in common; isolation has given place to concentration; rude independence to regulated dependence; the centrifugal tendency of individuals restrained by the centripetal tendencies of society ”

“ In the next place, while each is equally formidable to the other, each stands in need of the other for its own safety; neither is sufficient to itself for maintaining its independence against powerful and encroaching neighbours. ”

“ It was being made to mean a free partnership of self-governing peoples, held together not by force, but in part by common interests, and in a still higher degree by common sentiment and the possession of the same institutions of liberty. ”

“ But the unity which exists among intelligent and responsible persons, their mutual dependence and relationship, is just as real as that which obtains among material things, and is far more wonderful, more solemn and important in its nature, causes, and consequences. ”

“ Bound to each other by a common constitution, destined to life together under a common government, forming unitedly but a single member of a great family of nations, shall we not now at least endeavor to grow toward each other once more in heart, as we are indissolubly linked to each other in fortunes? ”

“ No doubt there is a unity of feeling among the members of a nation which makes them feel any loss of strength, real or apparent, sustained by the nation in its corporate character, as a hurt or disgrace to themselves, which they instinctively desire to revenge. ”

“ These enlarging relations and the consciousness of them must be loyally and joyfully accepted. They should arouse enthusiasm. The real unity of society, true national centralization, includes both the political and the personal phase. ”

“ Thus, from the establishment of a just internal organization, and of peace between individuals, there will necessarily result integrity in the external relations of nations towards each other, and universal peace among them. ”

“ The most valuable element of union, mutual kindness, the feelings of sympathy, the fraternal bonds, which now happily unite us, will have been extinguished for ever. One section will stand in menacing and hostile array against the other. The collision of opinion will be quickly followed by the clash of arms. ”

“ And who shall determine the limits of the unconscious life which in that lonely contemplation or that lonelier scorn, the soul receives from the State? For from the same source the component and the composite, the constituent and the constituted unity alike arise, and the Immanence that is in each is One. ”

“ If one side of the King's activity consists of the discharge of official acts whereby the unity, in form, of power throughout the Empire is maintained, on the other side he maintains a unity in personal relations. ”

“ The relation between free beings is a reciprocal influence upon each other through freedom, but not a causality through mechanically effective power. And thus the present dispute returns to the chief point of dispute, from which all our differences arise. ”

“ But that material nature in which the soul is embodied has the dividing quality of the prism, which resolves pure light into distinct rays; and so on earth we get the principle of freedom and the virtue of solidarity as separated ideals continually at warfare with each other, and the reconcilement on earth of these principles in man is the conquest of matter by the spirit. ”

“ From the operation of this principle originates the maxim ‘Union is strength;’ and whether the conflict be mental or physical, the people who are united together by the most numerous and powerful sympathies will oppose the strongest and the longest resistance to the innovations of external forces. On the contrary, if the bonds of moral union are few, and easily sundered, the strength of the nation is soon broken, and the fragments easily repelled from each other. ”