ship. The recognized value of the acquaintance is in
the extension of knowledge of people through their use and wont of
material things, of the ways and means of life outside limited and
personal areas. The acquaintanceship does not imply friendship
or sympathy or understanding among men or nations, it does not
necessarily result in wisdom, and to date, it does not result in a
larger social spirit. The acquaintanceship is based not on mutuality
of interest, but rather on rivalry and misinterpretations.

While our institutional life is an acknowledgment that interdependence
is a necessary factor in modern wealth production, we still measure
the strength of a man, or a society, or a nation, and say of all that
they are strong or weak as they are able apparently to stand alone. We
have not yet discovered that a desire to stand alone in an enterprise
where people are of necessity dependent, is a weakness and that our
ability to cooeperate with others in such an enterprise is a measure
of our strength, "From a social standpoint dependence denotes a power
rather than a weakness; it involves interdependence. There is always
danger that increased personal independence will decrease the social
capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it makes
him more self-sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and indifference.
It often makes an individual so insensitive in his relation to others
as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone,
an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of
the remediable suffering of the world."[A]

[Footnote A: John Dewey--Democracy and Education, p. 52.]

This provincial desire of individuals to stand apart and prove to
themselves and to others that they are exceptional people is a
primitive ambition in conflict with the actual facts of a present day
society where interdependence is a law of living. This conflict is
kept alive by the industrial motive of exploitation of people and of
wealth. Exploitation precludes sympathy as it precludes growth. "For
sympathy--as a desirable quality is something more than mere feeling;
it is cultivated imagination for what men have in common and rebellion
at whatever unnecessarily divides them." And further, Professor Dewey
remarks: "It must be borne in mind that ultimately social efficiency
means neither more nor less than capacity to share in a give-and-take
experience. It covers all that makes one's own exper