Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/72

Rh sundered even by the utmost efforts of abstraction. In a sense, any two objects that you recognize as real, or as possible, have points of resemblance. In a sense, also, any two objects, however nearly alike, have differences. Moreover, if you detect a difference between two objects and are asked in what respect the two differ, or are asked for what is often called the “point of difference,” a moment’s reflection shows you that what you name in your answer is not only a point of difference, but also a point of agreement or resemblance between the two objects. Two artists differ in style or in degree of skill. That is, they also agree in both possessing style or skill. Two solids differ in contour. That is, they both have contour, and in so far are alike. No skill of abstraction ever enables you to sunder the likenesses and the unlikenesses of facts, so as to place the two aspects of the world apart in your conception. Each depends upon the other. Where you estimate degrees of likeness and difference, and call objects “more” or “less” different, you get further illustrations of the same principle. For two objects do not grow appreciably “more” different, for your usual fashion of estimate, merely by losing points of agreement. What you may often call a “very wide,” or even the “widest possible” difference, comes to your consciousness in connection with contrasted or opposed objects, such as complementary colors, violent emotional changes, conflicts of will, and the like. But in such cases the difference is recognized as resting upon similarity. The complementary colors are more obviously contrasted than a color and an odor would be. Joy and grief, rage and gentleness, love and hate, are alike in being emotions, and the contrasted