In the closest union there is still some separate existence of component
parts; in the most complete separation there is still a reminiscence of
union. When they are most separate, the atoms seem to bear in mind that
they may one day have to come together again; when most united, they
still remember that they may come to fall out some day and do not give
each other their full, unreserved confidence.
The difficulty is how to get unity and separateness at one and the same
time. The two main ideas underlying all action are desire for closer
unity and desire for more separateness. Nature is the puzzled sense of a
vast number of things which feel they are in an illogical position and
should be more either of one thing or the other than they are. So they
will first be this and then that, and act and re-act and keep the balance
as near equal as they can, yet they know all the time that it isn’t right
and, as they incline one way or the other, they will love or hate.
When we love, we draw what we love closer to us; when we hate a thing, we
fling it away from us. All disruption and dissolution is a mode of
hating; and all that we call affinity is a mode of loving.
The puzzle which puzzles every atom is the puzzle which puzzles
ourselves—a conflict of duties—our duty towards ourselves, and our duty
as members of a body politic. It is swayed by its sense of being a
separate thing—of having a life to itself which nothing can share; it is
also swayed by the feeling that, in spite of this, it is only part of an
individuality which is greater than itself and which absorbs it. Its
action will vary with the predominance of either of these two states of
opinion.