Parting

“ ‘The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. ”

“ But in civilization generally when we part we either look forward to meeting again at some not remote period, or we have so many varied occupations, or so many friends around us, that if the partings are welded together, so also are the meetings. ”

“ And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne'er might be repeated: who could guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Once upon nights so sweet such awful morn could rise? ”

“ That Being will do yet more for me. We shall one day, O dearest, stand again at the partition-wall which shall divide our whole life into two parts, into an earthly and a spiritual;—and then shall we look back upon the latter part of the earthly which we shall have traversed together, as we do now upon its first part ”

“ There is a very striking division into assenting and dissenting temperaments, children of yes and children of no; a division which declares itself very early and is maintained all along the lines of early development, in mind and will and taste and manner, in every phase of activity. And though time and training and the schooling of life may modify its expression, yet below the surface it would seem only to accentuate itself, as the features of character become more marked with advancing years. ”

“ The great law of division became clear to him—the separation for a time of the universal agent into two parts, by the separation and reuniting of which comes light and heat and the hidden force of life, and the prime rules of attractive action; all things that are accounted material. ”

“ Association or grouping is, then, an intrinsic power of mind; but as all life seems to be built on opposites—light and darkness, heat and cold, love and hate—so mind, which is capable of association, is capable also of displacement or the splitting apart of elements which belong together. ”

“ I thought also that the idea which was expressed in some of the groups, of the human beings clinging together, and their sense of mutual relationship, was true and beautiful. There are very few single figures; they ascend or are hurled down in groups of two or more persons; they lift up each other, or they mutually drag each other down. ”

“ The first shot may well be an accident, the second may possibly be, but as the third inexorably follows, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and sons, look at each other with blanched faces, and instantly a hundred scenes of quiet preparation for meeting, are transformed into the confusion of a very different kind of preparation. ”

“ To the marriage of the Lamb;
Let us lean upon Thy breast,
Love be there our endless feast!
Let us join, (’tis God commands)
Let us join our hearts and hands
Help to gain our calling’s hope,
Build we each the other up. ”

“ Then we turn to the friends of ideas: to them we say, 'You distinguish becoming from being?' 'Yes,' they will reply. 'And in becoming you participate through the bodily senses, and in being, by thought and the mind?' 'Yes.' And you mean by the word 'participation' a power of doing or suffering? ”

“ They were, in their strange, final union—if union it could be called—very natural and very touching; but he was visibly stricken—he had his ailment in his eyes. She moved about him like a sister of charity—at all events like a sister. ”

“ Let us imagine, as an example, a large crowd in a public garden; I will soon classify it for you. I shall put the men on one side and the women on the other. Then—to begin with the women—I shall subdivide them into married and single. ”

“ But old Time shakes the box and casts the dice so many, many times, groupings must repeat themselves now and again, so it came about that after years filled with hard work and fair dreams, another shake of the box cast us down upon the table of Life, grouped together again—but each man knew and served me now faithfully, loyally; each giving me a hand to pull me up a step higher. ”

“ Here were nearly a hundred young men who had lived together intimately during four of the most impressionable years of life, and who, not only once but again and again, in different ways, deliberately, seriously, dispassionately, chose as their representatives precisely those of their companions who seemed least to represent them. ”

“ We may well adopt the metaphor of the organizing soul of the Inner Mission: "We must stretch a holy net of love, whose separate threads are already spun, but which waits upon this union for a well-ordered, closely connected whole." ”

“ In the midst of this loud talk of progress, therefore, in which so many of us at present are agreed to believe, which is, indeed, the common meeting point of all the thousand sects into which we are split, it is with saddened feelings that we see so little of it in so large a matter. ”

“ But, absent or present, the cause in which the people are to assemble has my God-speed, earnest, devoted, affectionate, and from the heart. What I can do let me do. There is no work I will not undertake, there is nothing I will not renounce, if so I may serve my country. ”

“ For a social relationship of the type of debtor, friend, neighbor, fellow-citizen, teacher, superior, ancestor, cousin, has the logical character illustrated by saying that if A stands in this relation to B, B may, and frequently does, stand in the same relationship to C, C to D, and so on, — the collection of social individuals A, B, C, constituting in this way an ordered series, sometimes of a very limited, but more often of a very widely extended scope. ”

“ Enough is what all had who did not have enough and all and some and all who were and some who were and all were and they all were dividing coming and meaning, and speaking and meeting and they all were dividing staying and working and all and some and one and all and some and all and all were dividing staying and speaking and working and advancing and losing and opening and selling. All were dividing coming and hearing and taking and going and agreeing and staying. ”

“ We may extend the social circle in which we move—a circle perhaps narrowed and restricted through circumstances beyond our control—by making intimate acquaintances, perhaps even close friends, among a society long departed, but which, when we have once learnt the trick of it, it rests with us to revive. ”

“ Here I speak of the primary position of the human group, as it has stood through unthinkable ages of waxing and waning civilisations; often unable to delegate any of its work, always unable to delegate all of it. ”

“ The social body, whether we consider the family, or the gathering of families into communities, or the collection of communities into nations, or the multitude of nations which form the population of the earth, may be regarded as an aggregate which should be pervaded by such ideas as are found essential for the comfort and happiness of gatherings casually brought together. ”

“ Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements, have no place in their thoughts; or terms whereby to express them in their language. The young couple meet, and are joined, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends; it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being. ”

“ But as we placed them side by side we could almost hear them sigh after their long separation—though whether with satisfaction or annoyance who shall say? Volumes, may be, can get as tired of their companions as human beings can. ”

“ Temporary Groups.—A study of the organization and development of social life is mainly a study of the mental and physical activities of individuals associated in permanent groups. Conditions change and there is a continual shifting of contacts as in a kaleidoscope, but the group is a fixed institution in the life of society. But besides the permanent groups there are temporary unorganized associations that have a place in social life too important to be overlooked. ”

“ Even members and directions which are apparently isolated are discovered to be related by significant connecting members and links, and the whole shows itself in all its parts as one and living,—therefore, also, as a life-rousing, life-nurturing, and life-developing totality. ”

“ Have we not a thousand plans to mature—a thousand things to settle, which we must settle, and none but we, and which we must discuss together? Are there not here four, six of us, brothers in arms together? I count you one, Father Jerome ”

“ The division must be accepted as a resolution of human nature into its essential constituents—to wit, bodily organisation and reason. Again, when human beings are divided into male and female, this is a separation of them into kinds; to mistake it for an analysis of mankind into elements would lead to very awkward misapprehensions.
16. So in regard to the analysis of cognition and of existence. ”

“ What a divine disorder! The peasants seem to have an instinctive sense for grouping. No matter how much the crowd moves or how many changes are evolved in it, it is always a beautiful whole, a fair scene, with balance of colour and form and sound. ”

“ The coming together either of men or of women from regions widely separate from each other naturally gives occasion for comparison. So far as I have known, the comparisons elicited by our meetings have more and more tended to resolve imagined discords into prevailing harmony. The sympathy of feeling aroused by our unity of object has always risen above the distinctions of section and belonging. ”

“ And, truly, everywhere in life where people are bound by common interests, blood relationship, or the benefits of a profession into close, individualized groups—there inevitably can be observed this mysterious law of sudden accumulation, of a piling up, of events ”

“ There are first the normal groups that are continually being formed and dissolved, but that perform a useful function while they exist. Such are the chance meetings and conversations of friends in all walks of life, and the crowds that gather occasionally to help forward a good cause. ”

“ Order and arrangement imply meaning and significance. Can we have an order that is an end in itself, is intrinsically satisfying, or beautiful, or stimulating? But to whom? To man. But take away love from man, and what is he? What is left is meaningless, even indescribable, for in love all things exist and have their being. ”

“ It might be said that the intense emotional ties which we observe in groups are quite sufficient to explain one of their characteristics —the lack of independence and initiative in their members, the similarity in the reactions of all of them, their reduction, so to speak, to the level of group individuals. But if we look at it as a whole, a group shows us more than this. ”

“ How often does it happen, that in assemblies where a certain coldness and stiffness of character may have prevailed the whole evening, at length, when the moment of separation arrives, these feelings yield to others of a more free and cordial nature. ”

“ Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most need them. ”

“ There they meet tenderly to challenge, and proudly to refuse, though not in fact repel. But here they meet to mingle, are always rushing together, and changing places; a new creation takes place beneath the eye. ”

“ But the deliberate and relentlessly-planned assemblage of such distinctly diverse types of men and women as prodded by unusual conditions of weather, domicile, and propinquity, will best act and re-act upon each other in terms inevitably dramatic, though most naively unrehearsed! ”

“ Why, yes, you see, then the strongest and best fellows were in the sixth, and the fifth-form fellows were afraid of them, and they kept good order; but now our sixth-form fellows are too small, and the fifth don't care for them, and do what they like in the house. ”

“ Groups form as fancy dictates. New combinations spring up each day,—no fatigue, no ennui, can ensue with such endless changes in companionship, and you yourself, instead of the fatiguing duties of a host, are at liberty, like any of your guests, to join this party or that. ”

“ Perhaps it may seem odd to talk about tanning and joinery in connection with culture, but indeed there is a subtle bond of union holding together all these things. Any phase of life can be understood only by associating with it some different phase. ”

“ They accustomed themselves to assemble before their huts round a large tree; singing and dancing, the true offspring of love and leisure, became the amusement, or rather the occupation, of men and women thus assembled together with nothing else to do. ”

“ After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart ”

“ We proceed to illustrate this hasty sketch of the Dynamics of a Parti-cle, by demonstrating the great Proposition on which the whole theory of Representation depends, namely:—"To remove a given Tangent from a given Circle, and to bring another given Line into contact with It." ”

“ We shall make our division on the principle of proceeding from the most general, or those which relate to society in its most extensive sense, to those which are less general, relating to society in its more specific and determinate sense, and finally to those which are the most particular, relating to separate portions and members of society, to the family and to the individual. ”