There has crept into our thoughts, through a thousand small
openings, a curious and unnatural idea. I mean the idea that unity is itself a
good thing; that there is something high and spiritual about things being
blended and absorbed into each other. That all rivers should run into one
river, that all vegetables should go into one pot -- that is spoken of as the
last and best fulfilment of being. Boys are to be 'at one' with girls; all
sects are to be 'at one' in the New Theology; beasts fade into men and men fade
into God; union in itself is a noble thing. Now union in itself is not a noble
thing. Love is a noble thing; but love is not union. Nay, it is rather a vivid
sense of separation and identity. Maudlin, inferior love poetry does, indeed,
talk of lovers being 'one soul', just as maudlin, inferior religious poetry
talks of being lost in God; but the best poetry does not. When Dante meets
Beatrice, he feels his distance from her, not his proximity; and all the
greatest saints have felt their lowness, not their highness, in the moment of
ecstasy. And what is true of these grave and heroic matters (I do not say, of
course, that saints and lovers have never used the language of union too, true
enough in its own place and proper limitation of meaning) -- what is true of
these is equally true of all the lighter and less essential forms of
appreciation of surprise. Division and variety are essential to praise;
division and variety are what is right with the world. There is nothing
specially right about mere contact and coalescence.
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