Part 43

“Pity,” said Virginia.

“How?” we all asked rather indignantly.

“Well,” she went on, “you get up for an old woman in the car, because you are sorry for her, so that she shouldn’t flop all over your shins.”

“Pity for the other people!” said Florence.

(We are always undecided in the club whether to put Virginia out of the room or whether to hug her. So, in our indecision, we leave her alone.)

I said: “We used to be told to reverence the old. I say to you, reverence every one. If you think of self as a symbol of the complete Self, as the holy thing, then you will reverence the self in every human being, in every creature.”

“I don’t think,” said Virginia, “that we have much sympathy with the self in animals we kill to eat.”

“That,” I answered, “is another question. It has nothing to do with what we are saying now.”

“I think it has,” she protested.

“Then,” I said, “if you reverence self, and understand and respect the self in every person, how could you quarrel with any one?”

“You expect us to know an awful lot,” said Virginia, “to know every one.”

“Certainly,” I answered. “Is not that our idea, to reach what we desire through understanding and sympathy with every one?”

They said they couldn’t respect every one. Some people they couldn’t help, as Henry said, pitying.

I objected strenuously to that word. All but Henry agreed with me. It is always a word of scorn.

They spoke of “feeling sorry for” people who had suffered some loss, feeling sorry, but not pitying.

“Then,” said Marian, “one ought not to say ‘sorry for’ but ‘sorry with.’”

Virginia said if a girl’s mother had died, and one had not known the mother, one might be sorry for her, but not sorry with her. They had a little argument, and to stop it I said one might be both sorry for and sorry with, but certainly one would have the “with” feeling.

Ruth objected that when there was an argument I always made both sides right.

“Why not?” I asked. “By the light of complete vision we do see most things as true which first seemed contradictory. Our idea of completeness is to include many truths, and show them to be the same truth.”

She admitted that.

Marian spoke of people she liked, but could not respect.

“If you knew them from the inside,” I said, “as they know themselves, you might feel otherwise.”

“Yes,” said Virginia, “I have always thought that if anybody knew all about me, knew me just as I know myself, they could not help liking me.”

I said: “It seems not much to expect of us, to understand our parents, who are so anxious for an understanding, and whom we love. After all, we do owe them something—when you consider that but for them we would not be here; and we are most of us rather glad that we are here.”

“Yes,” said Marian, “I would like to stay a while longer.”

Now we spoke of many things, many personal things, of quarrels and how to avoid them. Virginia amused us by saying people often quarreled with her, but she never quarreled with them.

Marian said: “If there’s one thing which makes people feel mean, angry, self-reproachful and small, it is to try to quarrel with some one who won’t be made angry.”

“Naturally,” I said, “they can’t help comparing themselves with the other person.”