Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/838

 808 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

friend does not in the first moment dispose its whole sadness, because it takes the lapse of time to present all the situations in which he was an element, and because we must first live through these situations as though after the loss of one of our bodily members, and because no first moment can summarize these experiences in the same way an important relationship cannot be properly appraised at the moment of dissolving it, for at that time the grounds for its dissolution control our consciousness. We rather discover the loss for each separate hour only by experience of case after case, and consequently our feeling with reference to the loss does not become wholly just until after a long time. Meanwhile, we have seemed to endure the loss with a certain equanimity. For this reason also the conciliation of many relationships is deep and passionate in proportion to the length of time during which the breach has continued.

That the degree of intensity of the conciliated relationship grows beyond that of the unbroken relationship has various causes. Principally a background is created through the expe- rience, in contrast with which all value and all continuations of the unity come into consciousness and vividness. In addition to this, the discretion with which one avoids every reference to what is past brings a new gentleness, indeed, even a new unspoken community of feeling into the relation. As a general rule, the common avoidance of a too sensitive point may signify quite as great intimacy and reciprocal understanding as the sort of indifference (Uugenirtheif) which makes each object of the inner life of the individual a matter on which to express opinion. Finally, the intensity of the wish to protect the newly enlivened relationship from every sort of shadow springs not merely from the experienced pains of the separation, but first of all from the con- sciousness that a second breach would not be so easily healed as the first. In countless cases such second reconciliation, at least between sensitive people, would reduce the whole relationship to the level of caricature. Even in the profoundest relationship a tragic breach and then a reconciliation may occur. This, how- ever, belongs among the experiences which may not take place more than once. The repetition of the experience between the