"A man," writes Emerson, "is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world." The oneness of Life precludes unrelated being. No one can build a fence around his individuality. No one can separate his life from the one Life. His God-ordered relationship to others he cannot change any more than he can change his relationship to his God. This inherent relatedness of man to man characterizes the creator's plan. None can alter it. It characterizes being.
Every true thought process involves relationship to our fellow man. Can you think a thought of kindness without feeling its relatedness to some brother? So every idea of justice, good will, and useful service relates us to others. Worthy ideas cannot, and do not, live in isolation. With them Mind fashions and welds the bonds of relatedness. In human experience the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the transport we employ, the modes of communication we use, speak to us of the interrelatedness of men and things.
But one does not have to look far to discover that many human relationships are discordant. Friction and strife burn in many homes, contention and deceit too often obtain in business; frequent are the struggles for place and power in social and political relationships. How sorely men need to find the basic Principle of being which naturally produces and maintains intelligent, loving, mutually helpful relationships between all men.
