The Stream of Life ~ William W. Birdsall

"The philosophy of our time tends to deal with man in the mass. The individual it is prone to consider only as a member of a group. It is out of this doctrine that we have our modern science of sociology and as affecting a large part of the interests of mankind the point of view is right, the philosophy is sound. But the deepest things of life concern the individual. We may talk as we will of our social self, of our civic self; we may magnify the importance of the group and relegate the individual to obscurity as an invisible molecule in the mass with which we have to do; but after all it is the character of the molecule which determines the properties of the mass. We merge our individual wishes in deference to public opinion; we unite our efforts for the common good ; but after all each of us lives his own life, and in the last analysis he lives his life alone. We depend upon each other for support, assistance, guidance, sympathy; we influence each other -sometimes more, sometimes less-but there is a final barrier beyond which the outside force may never penetrate. 


Even in those human natures which most resemble an open temple inviting all to enter, there is a certain holy of holies whose veil is never parted, within which there is no intrusion. What occurs within this citadel of the soul may be known to others only partially and indirectly; but out of it are the issues of life. This is the fountainhead from which the waters flow, making the stream of life bitter or sweet; the stream may wander through broad and pleasant meadows, fair and smiling; it may be harnessed to useful work, defiled by vileness from without; it may be changed beyond recognition by the influence of external forces; but the water retains forever a character which it owes to the source from which it sprung"

http://www.quaker.org/quest/fgc-1900.htm