Mutual understanding

“ While again we have in the personal love which is one with mutual insight a form of experience that, if translated into the language of the intellect, would require for its description a whole world of relations and predicates, and is yet, as experienced, an intimate unity no relational scheme can more than faintly adumbrate. ”

“ Through love, mutual faith, and a common aim towards acquiring, manifesting, and acting out knowledge, there has grown up round me a little company of men bound together by beautiful human bonds, the like of which you would with difficulty find elsewhere. ”

“ Now, the moment that the question of our mutual relations enters we have to be concerned with the way in which they will act on this power, quality, characteristic—call it what you will—that makes manhood. ”

“ It is such considerations that necessitate the harmonising mediation of reason, which tests our beliefs by their mutual compatibility, and examines, in doubtful cases, the possible sources of error on the one side and on the other. ”

“ Of all your relations, which is most potent to develop your manhood, to unfold to yourself, and to all, the hidden wealth and depths of your being; to vitalize and call into manly activity all the powers of your physical and intellectual nature? ”

“ Relations of course are relations, but in a sense I am going for my own sake too—since apart from the advantages from the point of view of digestion—to see the world and what people are doing is, so to say, the book of life and a second education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One way of cultivating the sentiments would be for men to meet and act together, on the fixed principles which I am now endeavoring to unfold, and to exercise on each other in mutual instruction, and in united adoration of the great and glorious Creator, the several faculties of Benevolence, Veneration, Hope, Ideality, Wonder, and Justice. ”

“ When the relations of what we call a thing are told, no caput mortuum of intrinsicality, no 'nature,' is left. The relations soak up all there is of the thing; the 'items' of the world are but foci of relation with other foci of relation; and all the relations are necessary. ”

“ But experience teaches that the work of mutual adaptation is precisely what they have to learn, to understand each other's peculiarities and tastes, weaknesses and excellencies, and by self-discipline and kindness of construction on both sides to receive and impart a modifying influence, bringing them nearer each other all the time, until through this interchangeable moral and spiritual culture the hopes of happiness are fully realized. ”

“ Our relation, all round, exists—it's a reality, and a very good one; we're mixed up, so to speak, and it's too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it. ”

“ Let every simplest relation towards human being, if it be embodied but in the act of buying a reel of cotton or a knife, be recognized as a relation with, a meeting of that human soul. In its poor degree let its outcome be in truth and friendliness. ”

“ Let us look then at life just as it is. Here we find ourselves involved with one another in the most complex relations—economic, political, social, domestic, and the rest; and about and in these relations centres the interest of our life, whether it be pleasurable or painful, empty or full, or whatever its character. ”

“ Don't you think we can be together without harming each other? We shall both have the same aims—to live the best life and do the most good that we can—what will the details matter? We could not thwart each other really—it would be impossible. ”

“ It is aiming for reciprocal relations, from the best in us to the best in others, and from the best in others to the best in ourselves. It is the foundation of all that is strengthening, and quiet, and happy, in all human intercourse with young and old. ”

“ They have more and more become social questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one another,—not merely their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to one another. ”

“ We are conscious of all these; we encounter them all in one common field, which is the subject that experiences them. What necessity, then, is there to imagine intermediate beings in order to bring the faculties of the soul into communication with each other? ”

“ On one side, the direct primary relations that exist between men, in their purely personal attitude toward one another, have been steadily pressed into greater intimacy and closeness, at every step of advance which has been made in the diffusion of knowledge and in the social organization of the race, while they have been more and more generalized in the same operation. ”

“ There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world. ”

“ Why do we so willingly speak and talk one with another, when notwithstanding we seldom cease our converse before we have hurt our conscience?
Why we so willingly talk is, for that by discoursing one with another, we seek to receive comfort one of another, and desire to ease our mind. ”

“ Let charity rule in a discussion, and how different is the result. Each party then strives to aid the other in discovering the truth, and at the close of the Conversation each has made some advance in the knowledge of truth. The ideas of both have become more clear and rational, and their minds have acted with far more power, because they have been given exclusively to the object under consideration instead of being divided between the object and self-love. ”

“ That in affairs of very considerable importance men should deal with one another with satisfaction of mind, and mutual confidence, they must receive competent assurances concerning the integrity, fidelity, and constancy each of other. ”

“ As you say, we have eaten and walked and talked together as freely as children for more than two years. In that time we have become well acquainted—not the poor, shallow acquaintance of formal society, but the near, intimate association of two human beings who honestly express themselves to each other. ”

“ If there be still much mystery attaching to this linking of the two extreme facts of our experience, it is simply this: that we have made so little way in ascertaining what in one goes with what in the other. We know a good deal about the feelings and their alliances, some of which are open and palpable to all mankind; and we have obtained some important generalities in these alliances. ”

“ That such an impression can be produced, no one can question who observes the conduct of men in their ordinary relations to each other. By whatever term we christen it—endeavouring to define either the cause or its effect—we all concur in admitting that decision of character, earnestness of manner, enthusiasm, a commanding aspect, a piercing eye, or a strong will, exercise a manifest control over common natures, whether they be acting separately or in masses. ”

“ Our social intercourse, as commonly managed, is a mere semblance of the reality sought. What is it that we want? Some sympathetic converse with our fellow-creatures: some converse that shall not be mere dead words, but the vehicle of living thoughts and feelings—converse in which the eyes and the face shall speak, and the tones of the voice be full of meaning—converse which shall make us feel no longer alone, but shall draw us closer to another, and double our own emotions by adding another's to them. ”

“ Relation, then, to our topic or interest is constantly felt in the fringe, and particularly the relation of harmony and discord, of furtherance or hindrance of the topic. When the sense of furtherance is there, we are 'all right;' with the sense of hindrance we are dissatisfied and perplexed, and cast about us for other thoughts. ”

“ If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each other's natures with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth. ”

“ In the relations of the people to each other, as well as in all their relations to himself, he will find a constant amenity, a tact, a good-nature such as he will elsewhere have met with only in the friendship of exclusive circles. ”

“ Accordingly, instead of reducing qualities to relations, it seems to me a much more intelligible view to consider relations as abstract ways of taking qualities in general, as qualities thought of in their function of bridging a gap or making a transition between two bits of reality that have previously been taken as separate things. ”

“ The terminology of relationship is only a specially favourable example by means of which to show the value of an attitude towards, and mode of treatment of, social facts which hold good, though less conspicuously, throughout the whole field of sociology. ”

“ Mind and heart, understanding and sense, were drawn together with an inevitable elective affinity, and this at the same time produced an intimate union between individuals of the most different types. ”

“ Tones of the human mind may be different, but they should be Discord. concordant, in order to blend properly. Unselfish ambition, noble life-motives, and purity, these different elements of the human mind, meeting and mingling, constitute true happiness. ”

“ Even those whom wisdom or virtue have placed above regard to such petty recommendations, must nevertheless be gained by similitude of manners. The highest and noblest enjoyment of familiar life, the communication of knowledge, and reciprocation of sentiments, must always pre-suppose a disposition to the same inquiry, and delight in the same discoveries. ”

“ The real business of life is trying to understand each other.” ”

“ Earn it if you believe you have a right to it. The measure of my sentiments can not be prescribed to me, nor the aim of my feelings determined. We and the world have only one relation toward each other, that of usefulness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suppose A and B to be in so far predetermined by the system of the absolute ideas, that some moral relationship — that of equal, of fellow-citizen, of friend, of enemy, of lover, of questioner and answerer, or of any other moral nature, vague or exact — is to exist between them, at any point in their lives. ”

“ You are now learning, by philosophic inquiry, what the men ought to be with whom you have not as yet generally entered into any near, close, and indissoluble relations. You will soon come into closer relations with them. ”

“ If the feeling of relations exists in us,... it is necessarily the most varied and the most fertile of all human feelings: 1°, the most varied, because, relations being more numerous than beings, the feelings of relation must be in the same proportion more numerous than the sensations whose presence gives rise to their formation; 2°, the most fertile, for the relative ideas of which the feeling-of-relation is the source ... are more important than absolute ideas, if such exist.... If we interrogate common speech, we find the feeling of relation expressed there in a thousand different ways. ”

“ By this I mean, that men of kindred natures and aims find each other more readily [95] and confide in each other more freely, while the least jarring element rapidly drives others further and further apart. ”

“ We are born into relations which we accept as normal and inevitable; we break away from them in order that by detachment we may see them objectively and from a distance, and that we may come to self-consciousness; we resume these relations of deliberate purpose and with clear perception of their moral significance. ”

“ One shares in what another has thought and felt and in so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified. Nor is the one who communicates left unaffected. Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing ”

“ Agreement between intellects seems unattainable, and we turn to the truth of feeling as the only universal bond of union. ”

“ In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. ”

“ Back of their harmonious relations with each other is the intelligent force of a Spiritually evolved people, expressing itself in elevated thoughts and aims, and in the beautiful in art, architecture, industry and thrift, which ever are the concomitants of properly adjusted social relations and of an intelligent sense of duty. ”