Shared goal

“ The mind to tolerate or even to make use of each other by cooperation does not compel us to admit association. Not until the feelings have been changed in force and direction, not until the crossing and clashing of many desires has neutralized opposing impulses and achieved a kind of artificial parallelism of wills, must we predicate the presence of society with all its characteristic workings.
We may regard the shaping received by the feelings and desires of the individual in the course of community life as due partly to Social Influence and partly to Social Control. ”

“ Let our objective be common, let our Hearts be one, we shall spend our day in this equality.
Once this is achieved then we can proceed to fight to achieve goals before us. Any collective work needs this connecting of minds as a first step. ”

“ And that there should be intelligent agreement, a community of thought and feeling, on all matters of importance, is surely the first necessity for the healthy and harmonious development of family life. ”

“ But all our common life is somehow the outcome of our separate individual lives—of your life and mine. Therefore how important it is in the common interest that each of us should look above all things to his own life and its character, for this will determine his contribution to the life of his society. ”

“ Shall our lives be secure? Shall our homes be safe? Shall our wives and children live in quiet? Shall right, and not might, be the governing principle of society?
“It is to decide questions thus vital to our happiness and that of those who are dependent upon us, that we have now met; and I beg you as fellow-men, as brothers, as friends and neighbors, as you value life, and liberty, and justice, and a good conscience, to come to their consideration ready and determined to act for the best good of the greatest number. ”

“ The union of thought and will and activity by which the clearer will is generated, the social process, is a perfect unity.
We see this in our daily life where we do not finish our thought, construct our will, and then begin our actualizing. Not only the actualizing goes on at the same time, but its reactions help us to shape our thought, to energize our will. We have to digest our social experience, but we have to have social experience before we can digest it. We must learn and build and learn again through the building, or we must build and learn and build again through the learning. ”

“ Through such group organizations men develop the understanding of one another and of the community at large, which is the foundation of brotherhood and civilized life. It is through them that the community develops standards of living; it is through them that the ideals of cooperation acquire reality. It is by the acquisitive instinct that men live; it is by the consciousness of kind, the instinct of mutual aid and cooperation, that men are transformed [Pg 21] into human beings. ”

“ How much is left undone, for the sake of society! But let us pause a moment, and ask what society is. Is it a community of tried and trusted friends, united together by the ties of perfect love? Listen to the remarks of those, even of your own family, who return from the evening party, or the morning call. Is it a community of beings with whom mind is all in all, and intellectual improvement the purpose for which they meet? Observe the preparations that are made—the dress, the furniture, the food, the expense that is lavished upon these. ”

“ Love, sympathy, fellowship, is what makes human life truly human. Cooperation, mutual service, is its fruitage. A clear-cut realisation of this and a resolute acting upon it would remove much of the cloudiness and [Pg 232] the barrenness from many a life; and its mutual recognition—and action based upon it—would bring order and sweetness and mutual gain in vast numbers of instances in family, in business, in community life. It would solve many of the knotty problems in all lines of human relations and human endeavour, whose solution heretofore has seemed well-nigh impossible. ”

“ All my life was turned towards the progress of the people, the helping of man, and it leaped forward to meet the stronger hope, the lofty ideal of social brotherhood, the rendering possible to all of freer life ”

“ The many are almost ready to grasp the great unifying conception. This is the next step for the human family as a whole; this the present planetary brooding. Much we have suffered from identifying ourselves with parts. Rivalries, boundaries, jealousies, wars—all have to do with the making of parts. Beauty, harmony, peace and brotherhood have to do with the assembly of parts into one. That which is good for the many is good for the one; and that which is good for the one is good for the many—the instant we leave the part and conceive the whole. ”

“ Now this plan of bearing one another’s burdens is not only good in benefit clubs—it is good in families, in parishes, in nations, in the church of God, which is the elect of all mankind. Unless men hold together, and help each other, there is no safety for them. ”

“ But if public spirit, generous sentiments, or true justice and equality are desired, association, not isolation, of interests, is the school in which these excellences are nurtured. The aim of improvement should be not solely to place human beings in a condition in which they will be able to do without one another, but to enable them to work with or for one another in relations not involving dependence. ”

“ One hope, one faith, one path of social salvation, remains for us both and for all the world—namely, cooperative Christian association, that, baffling pride and greed, restores to the workman the produce of his work, and renders the practical love of our neighbor the means of satisfaction for our own needs, whether of the senses or the soul. ”

“ I do not see, if I may continue to speak personally, that in the great affairs of life, in duty, love, self-control, the willingness to serve, the sense of joy, the power to endure, there is any great difference among those of the same community; and this is reasonable, for the permanent relations of life, in families, in social ties, in public service, and in all that the belief in heaven and the attachments to home bring into men's lives, are the same ”

“ Such efforts strengthen the bonds of affection and obligation that unite us and assure that the family, the primary guardian of life and human values, will continue to be the foundation of our society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our children and our children's children will know how to use freedom for service, and service for mutual growth, and mutual growth for community betterment, in those "world's great bridals, chaste and calm," which the future shall make the common glory of the home. ”

“ In point of fact, we get a composite expression of the highest soul element of the mass—a new phase of the exceeding fruitfulness of co-operative effort! It may be stated in conclusion, that there comes to the minds of our people, an added power, flowing from the general hypnotic effect, of harmonious co-operation. This power brings with it a right conception of human life, in which a certain amount of necessary, productive labor, becomes the keynote, which completes a perfect anthem, and more symmetrically rounds out the full measure, melody and grandeur, of an individual existence. ”

“ Will this expanded orb of humanity revolve around the same centre as the first family circle, or the first independent community? How can you give it cohesion and harmony? Extend the radii of family relationship and influence to its circumference in every direction. Throne the sovereign in a parent’s chair, to execute a father’s laws. He shall treat them as children, and they each other as brethren. Here is a grand programme for human society. Here is a vigorous discipline for the wayward will and temper of the human heart. How is a man to feel and act in these new conditions? ”

“ 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." ”

“ Such a view of the value of the individual and of the importance of the family relation leads logically to the conception of the obligation of the individual who accepts the privileges of the family relation so to adjust his life to the lives of the other members of his family group as to preserve their individual freedom, and to coöperate with them in the effort so to adjust the group to the social order as not to interfere with the freedom of other individuals to enter into and to maintain the family relation. ”

“ The exigencies of life render it necessary that the different elements and forms of society should coöperate together for common interests. They strengthen the desire for social order, they quicken the spirit of organization. ”

“ That there must be a measure of harmonious co-operation in all personal or social progress is certain, but the achievement of complete harmony would seem to bring progress to an end and to carry a purely static conception of “the good.” ”

“ Cast our experiences in a larger mould if our lives are to be animated by the larger social aims. We have met the obligations of our family life, not because we had made resolutions to that end, but spontaneously, because of a common fund of memories and affections, from which the obligation naturally develops, and we see no other way in which to prepare ourselves for the larger social duties. ”

“ We can already catch glimpses of a world in which the bonds which bind the individual are no longer laws, but social habits—the result of the need felt by each one of us to seek the support, the co-operation, the sympathy of his neighbours. ”

“ Therefore strive earnestly and put forth your greatest endeavor toward the accomplishment of this fellowship and the cementing of this bond of brotherhood between you. Such an attainment is not possible without will and effort on the part of each; from one, expressions of gratitude and appreciation; from the other kindliness and recognition of equality. Each one should endeavor to develop and assist the other toward mutual advancement. This is possible only by conjoining of effort and inclination. Love and unity will be fostered between you, thereby bringing about the oneness of mankind. ”

“ It was the first group to develop, by virtue of its conscious relationship, the sense of trust and the habit of service of the stronger to the weaker, thus leading toward mutual aid within an area of affection and good-will. ”

“ Answering that challenge will require some soul-searching: Do we have the generosity to collaborate? Can we build legal, organizational, and financial structures that will preserve and order—but also share and disseminate the learning of the world? ”

“ Let us remind them that we are all embarked together, with a common interest and a common fate. And let us, without rebuke or unkindness, beseech them to consider what the good of the whole requires, what is best for them and for us. ”

“ Society is made up of various units, lending to one another support by the mutual participation in the activities of life. The family—the first in order of time and dignity—is beyond doubt the principal and central unit. ”

“ We believe in association—which is but the reduction to action of our faith in one sole God, and one sole law, and one sole aim—as the only means we possess of realising the truth; as the method of progress; the path leading towards perfection. The highest possible degree of human progress will correspond to the discovery and application of the vastest formula of association. ”

“ While the author writes intelligently and forcefully upon stirpiculture, education, invention, hygiene, sanitation, moral, physical and mental growth and culture, and injects many new, beautiful and practical thoughts into each of these subjects, his chief theme is unselfish co-operation, his chief purpose is to exhibit the benefits, moral, physical, social and financial, that will be showered upon the human family when they become wise enough to cease competing with each other, and progressive enough to begin co-operating. ”

“ Better, it may be agreed, than great schemes—voluntary or legal—is the individual service of men and women who, putting heart and mind into their efforts, and co-operating together, take as their motto “One by One”; but again the same question presses itself in another form: Should the individual who aspires to serve his generation separate himself from the ordinary avocations of Society, and become a visitor or teacher? ”

“ As, in the structure of the world, the apparently opposing tendencies of the centrifugal and centripetal forces produce the harmony of the spheres, so, in the social life of man, self-interest and conscience produce in him the feeling for the common good.108 This sentiment of the common interest is the foundation on which rise in successive gradation, the life of the family, of the community, of the nation and of humanity, the last of which should be coincident with the life of the Church. ”

“ That it is for your own interest to be united? What if you don't think alike on some questions? That is rather an advantage than otherwise, for you cannot all plow the same field; on the contrary, the more fields and opinions there are in the family, the greater our strength and happiness. ”

“ Treating the family as an instinctive realization of the moral life, and not as the result of contract, he shows how by the means of wider associations due to private interests the state issues as the full home of the moral spirit, where intimacy of interdependence is combined with freedom of independent growth. ”