Commonly men have an idea that differences mean, or point to, unity, but they are more likely to suppose that the unity is by mere contrast or antithesis than [p.139] clearly to recognize that it is a most intimate fact of the differences themselves. They will even see in a number of things only so many varying aspects of some one thing, and will go so far as to look upon the aspects as actually enriching and deepening the unity, but they still fail fully to appreciate how the real unity is immanent and immediate in the differences. Again, in all their thinking they contrast, and may consciously observe that they contrast, only objects or people that really have something in common, comparing, on the other hand, only such as in some way are manifestly different, and in their practical affairs they compete only with those who with them are parties to one and the same life, a fundamental sympathy, indeed, being a necessary condition of their rivalry, and actually and actively hate only the beings whom because of a common humanity they might love; but here, too, their appreciation lags behind the fact.
In life generally, moreover, in small things and in large, extremes do have the habit of meeting. A man's virtues are so near to his vices. The widest variations in things are only relatively at variance. Even what is cold is somewhat warm. Nothing is absolutely anything. In history a single ideal, rising to influence, has always divided men into two opposing camps. Witness the fact of bipartisanship, not in politics alone, but in all of life's interests. Democrats and Republicans, Radicals and Conservatives alike have loved their country and honoured their country's flag and, regardless of party, their country's heroes or patriots. Epicureans and Stoics--in recent times or long ago--have found the same life worth living. The [p.140] Roman Law and the Roman Holiday, working together, like the right and the left hand, different yet in sympathy, made the great empire. Two men, furthermore, in active, open conflict are in truth at serious difference with each other; but, as they might even say, if their conflict were in the form of a debate, where words instead of fists or pistols were the weapons, in the bare, unapplied principle involved, or say in the abstract, in the final success of whichever is the "best man," they do and they must agree. Simply throughout this life of ours there has been and there can be no idealism without conflict and no conflict, whatever the issue or the manner, without common weapons, which means, too, without some common relationship and some common interest. As for the idealism, too, what is it but a demand for real unity? And the common weapons, or for quite general purposes, the common forms in which a conflict or an opposition is expressed, as if the hiding-place of unity, perhaps a sleeping unity, only indicate in the very differences a basis, a potential of agreement, even an earnest of an underlying and sometimes awakening accord. So, truly, in life at large extremes do meet. But commonly men recognize at most only that they meet, without realizing that their difference is intrinsic to a real unity.