Sameness

“ How gracious it is, that He should so inextricably mingle the first impression of matter with that perception of the otherness of person that makes Love possible! Thus love and the sense of individuality are correlative creations and twin births. Later, the sense of individuality becomes a positive self-love (which in its healthy degree is innocent) , and the perception of otherness of person, with whom it is delightful to be in free union, becomes the basis of the self-forgetting generosity of mankind. ”

“ Thus by threads of love, threads of hatred, threads of adoration, threads of thought, the universe of souls is interpenetrated and linked up into a unity of correlated activity, an intricate web of life." [9] Something of myself goes, in my thoughts, into this written word: you read it, and as the thought incorporates itself in your mind so does some tenuous element of my personality creep into your own. Our independence is a fiction. We inspire each other, whether we like it or no. ”

“ Thus great love already gives to two human beings what only completed development can give to mankind as a whole: unity between senses and soul, desire and duty, self-assertion and self-devotion, between the individual and the race, the present moment and the future. ”

“ All the little self-satisfactions which arise from the sense of duty performed, all the cheese-parings of equity between oneself and others, all the tiny wonderments whether you are better or worse than your neighbor, have to be abandoned; and you have to learn to live in a world in which the chief fact is not that you are distinct from others, but that you are a part of and integral with them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. ”

“ It is the longing, equivalent to a noble life, toward the perfection of our being through the union with a being in harmony with ourselves; toward the complete satisfaction of our personality by becoming one with another personality, by a blending of souls that perfects both, as the blending of two metals results in a third that is superior to and more durable than either alone. ”

“ And just as in true sympathy, the partial suppression of individualism and of what is distinctive, we experience a superior delight and intensity of being, so it may be that in parting with all that shuts us up in the spiritual penthouse of an Ego—all, without exception or reserve—we may for the first time know what true life is, and what are its ineffable privileges. ”

“ In all these three stages of honour, love, and fidelity, we shall find the soil on which the self-subsistency of personality, the soul, is supported, an independence which, however, constantly unfolds in a wider and more affluent content, remaining in the same self-reconciled. ”

“ I now feel certain that before we can reach the individualism which we crave—and have tried to claim too soon—we must first know such participation as hers in all conscious life—in all life, conscious or unconscious. ”

“ For the little soul that cries aloud for continued personal existence for itself and its beloved, there is no help. For the soul which knows itself no more as a unit, but as a part of the Universal Unity of which the Beloved also is a part ”

“ And, when you ask how much sympathy you ought to bestow, although the amount is, truly enough, a matter of ideal on your own part, yet in this notion of the combination of ideals with active virtues you have a rough standard for shaping your decision. In any case, your imagination is extended. You divine in the world about you matter for a little more humility on your own part, and tolerance, reverence, and love for others; and you gain a certain inner joyfulness at the increased importance of our common life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But when that consciousness begins to shine out into your individuality, and look after your thoughts and affections which have arisen out of your individual development, and which have grown out of individual relations peculiar to yourself, then this conscious light and conscious heat, this conscious understanding and affection within you, begins to reveal to you your individual selfhood—that which constitutes you an individual being separate from all other individual beings. ”

“ The truth is, we each of us have an inborn conviction that the whole world, with everybody and everything in it, was created as a sort of necessary appendage to ourselves. Our fellow men and women were made to admire us, and to minister to our various requirements. ”

“ So from other lives we draw and appropriate continually into our own, and we need the manifestations of life to make us harmonious. Each person draws something from us that none other can, and imparts out of its special quality that which we cannot receive from any other. We need at times to surrender our will, to merge ourselves into another sphere, and loose the tension of our own action ”

“ But, if you look closely at that region of our consciousness where first we come nearest to facing what we take to be an experience of individuality, you find, I think, that it is our selective attention, especially as embodied in what one may call our exclusive affections, which first brings home to us what we mortals require an individual being to be. ”

“ Tones of the human mind may be different, but they should be Chord and discord concordant in order to blend properly. Unselfish ambition, noble life-motives, and purity, — these constituents of thought, mingling, constitute individually and collectively true happiness, strength, and permanence. ”

“ Your virtues, and the graces of mind and character upon which you pride yourself—your strength and composure, your patience and devotion to duty, your honesty, your justice, your purity—all these belong not only to yourself but to the society which has produced you and of which you are a part. ”

“ In this opponent of selfism, this regard for the rights and happiness of others equally with our own, we find the link which binds together the two halves of the moral principle. The love sentiment on the one hand, the sense of duty on the other, meet and combine in the zeal of altruism, for which a truly developed conscience is merely another term. ”

“ By our common humanity, my brothers and sisters, by our common capacities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter and our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something better than ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in something good, and to invest whatever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities that are superior to our own failings and weaknesses as we know them in our own poor hearts—by these, Hear me!—Surely, it is enough to be fellow-creatures. ”

“ By this perpetually-renewed casting down of the hard barriers of individuality, these willing submissions to the compelling rhythm of a larger existence than that of the solitary individual or even of the human group--by this perpetual widening, deepening, and unselfing of your attentiveness--you are to enlarge your boundaries and become the citizen of a greater, more joyous, more poignant world, the partaker of a more abundant life. ”

“ The instant one perceives the inner meaning of Equality, glimpsing the great Seamless Robe of humanity as one;—he realises that what is best for him is best for all others—what is best for the many is his own highest behest.... ”

“ But at the same time we dare not lose sight of the fact of the singleness of human life, if for no other reason than that, otherwise we have no moral appeal to make on behalf of those ties and duties. ”

“ Beside, I ask—Is the p. 170experience and the conclusion of the vast majority of all mankind to go for nothing? For if there be one point on which human beings have been, and are still, agreed, it is this—that each of them is, to his joy or his sorrow, an I; a separate person. And, I should have said, this conviction becomes stronger and stronger in each of them, the more human they become, civilized, and worthy of the respect and affection of their fellow-men. ”

“ Myself, the other Self, and love, the holy spirit.
c. The inner meaning of dualism: the two are two sides of one thing, the negative and the positive. Light makes darkness.
d. Personal, parental, and all other ideas of God are included in our larger view. The unity embraces all ideas and diversities.
III. Progress As the Trend Toward Complete Self:
a. Throughout history the only progress has been toward greater understanding and brotherhood:
1. The value of railroads, telephones, etc.
b. The good is whatever leads toward understanding, sympathy, wholeness. ”

“ The world is indeed there in the background. But it is there as embodiment of Life, and not merely as the object of discrimination. It is a world with which we stand in Social Relations. Its life cooperates with ours. ”

“ We're all human beings here, one like the other." ”

“ In other words, it is by a definite process of broadening our minds that we come to realize the lives of others, to transfer to them the interest we naturally take in our own lives, and to admit them to a state of equality with ourselves. ”

“ And just so far as I fall short of systematic individuality, whether from the poverty of my interests or their mutual incompatibility, the appearance of unity in my life is illusory, and I must be pronounced an unreal appearance. ”

“ We must be our own before we can be another's. ”

“ III. Having thus spoken of the resources and the subject of the scholar, out of the same faith proceeds also the rule of his ambition and life. Let him know that the world is his, but he must possess it by putting himself into harmony with the constitution of things. He must be a solitary, laborious, modest, and charitable soul.
He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must have his glees and his glooms alone. ”

“ This self, which shall express itself in you, in me, in everybody, is to link your experience to mine in such fashion that we shall see related outer worlds. Because this self in you constructs a show-space in three dimensions, and does a similar thing for me, therefore we alike look out into the depths of space, where the same stars seem to glitter for us all. Unity, fixity, assurance, we get, if we get such prizes at all, only by virtue of that rational and spiritual unity that is beneath our lives. ”

“ The maintenance of the individuality is thus demonstrably a duty. The assertion of personal claims is essential; both as a means to self-happiness, which is a unit in the general happiness, and as a means to furthering the general happiness altruistically. ”

“ Care for self gains a new significance in the light of love or affection for any other being, and in the action and reaction of character in human society, this newer significance gradually spreads, leavening [Pg 445] the whole of mankind. Our analysis is unable to trace its workings and significance in all the complicated relations of men. ”

“ It is in real truth the eternal and natural expression and embodiment of a form of life higher than that of the individual—that common life of mutual helpfulness, stimulation, and contest which gives leave and opportunity to the individual life, makes it possible, makes it full and complete. ”

“ To be together with no one to interfere with them, and independent of everybody but themselves, was a habit whose origin was too remote for inquiry, and that had become a second nature and a settled theory of life—a sort of instinct of pride and modesty, moreover, though an instinct too natural to be aware of its own existence. ”

“ "Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?" ”

“ That true self-love and social are the same; That virtue only makes our bliss below; And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know. ”

“ Extreme egoism, as it is the outgrowth of a later age, was unknown; and sympathy, the chief promoter of the well-being of mankind, a sprout from the well-established root, maternal affection, was the predominant characteristic of these primitive groups and the bond which held society together. ”

“ But we also find it socially convenient to view the common objects of our human and social knowledge as independent both of my fellow and myself, even while we still view these objects as the same for both of us, and for all other actual and possible human observers. ”

“ An immeasurable love for humanity took possession of me now that I had at length attained the point of view which so perfectly harmonized with my individuality. ... I myself became equivalent to humanity ”

“ The same spirit pervades every act of both; duty in one case, display in the other, are the ruling principles of life; and, where persons are so diametrically different, there is little likelihood of much mutual understanding or mutual esteem. ”