“It is ugly,” I said. “I dislike it, because it is not beautiful. How can any one live a beautiful, harmonious life who begins by being out of harmony in his relation with the person whom he loves? For that is the truth. Children often love dearly the parent with whom they are always disagreeing. How shall we get understanding and unity and sympathy in life if we cannot get it with those nearest us, those we love?” “Of course,” said Henry, “our idea of life, of complete sympathy, is against all that kind of thing.” “It is much easier,” said Marian, “to know what is right than to do it.” We all agreed. “But why,” I said, “should we suffer regrets, and do ugly things, when there must be some way to stop it?” “What way?” asked Marian. “Well, first, what is our feeling toward older people?” “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.