s, morally
and spiritually. There is a social conscience, which we affect, and
which constantly affects us. We cannot rise very much above it; to
fall much below it, is for all true purposes to cease to live. We have
recognized social standards which test morality; we have common ties,
common duties, common responsibilities.

But with it all, in spite of the fact of the community of human life,
there is the other fact of the singleness of human life. We have a
life, which we must live _alone_. We can never get past the ultimate
fact of the personal responsibility of each. We may be leaves from the
same tree of life, but no two leaves are alike. We may be wrapped up
in the same bundle, but one bundle can contain very different things.
Each of us is colored with his own shade, separate and peculiar. We
have our own special powers of intellect, our own special experience,
our own moral conscience, our own moral life to live. So, while it is
true that we stand or fall together, it is also true--and it is a
deeper truth--that we stand or fall alone.

In this crowded world, with its intercourse and jostling, with its
network of relationships, with its mingled web of life, we are each
alone. Below the surface there is a deep, and below the deep there is
a deeper depth. In the depth of the human heart there is, and there
must be, solitude. There is a limit to the possible communion with
another. We never completely open up our nature to even our nearest
and dearest. In spite of ourselves something is kept back. Not that
we are untrue in this, and hide our inner self, but simply that we are
unable to reveal ourselves entirely. There is a bitterness of the
heart which only the heart knoweth; there is a joy of the heart with
which no stranger can intermeddle; there is a bound beyond which even a
friend who is as our own soul becomes a stranger. There is a Holy of
Holies, over the threshold of which no human feet can pass. It is safe
from trespass, guarded from intrusion, and even we cannot give to
another the magic key to open the door. In spite of all the complexity
of our social life, and the endless connections we form with others,
there is as the ultimate fact a great and almost weird solitude. We
may fill up our hearts with human fellowship in all its grades, yet
there remains to each a distinct and separated life.

We speak vaguely of the mass of men, but the mass consists of units,
each with his own l