This obedience will lead to our knowing more
laws and knowing them better, and it will in time become a very
simple matter to distinguish the right care from the wrong, and to
get a living sense of how power increases with the one, and
decreases with the other.
XVIII.
OUR RELATIONS WITH OTHERS
EVERY one will admit that our relations to others should be quiet
and clear, in order to give us freedom for our work. Indeed, to make
these relations quiet and happy is the special work that some of us
have to do. There are laws for health, laws for gaining and keeping
normal nerves, laws for honest, kindly action toward others,--but
the obedience to all these is a dead obedience, and does not lead to
vigorous life, unless accompanied by a hearty love for work and play
with those to whom we stand in natural relations,--both young and
old. It is with life as it is with art, what we do must be done with
love, or it will have no force. Without the living spark of love, we
may have the appearance, but never the spirit, of useful work or
quiet content. Stagnation is not peace, and there can be no life,
and so no living peace, without happy relations with those about us.
The more we realize the practical strength of the law which bids us
love our neighbor as ourselves, and the more we act upon it, the
more quickly we gain the habit of pleasant, patient friendliness,
which sooner or later may beget the same friendliness in return.
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