The only fact, the only truth is the creative activity which appears as the great complex we call humanity. The activity of creating is all. To view it from the outside, to dissect it into its difference elements, to lay these elements on the dissecting table as so many different individuals, is to kill the life and feed the fancy with dead images, empty, sterile concepts. But let us set about relating ourselves to our community in fruitful fashion, and we shall see that our individuality is bodying itself forth in stronger and stronger fashion, our difference shaping itself in exact conformity with the need of the work we do. For we must remember when we say that the essence of individuality is the relating of self to other difference, that difference is not something static, something given, that it also is involved in the world of becoming.
Differences develop within the social process and are united through the social process.
Difference which is not capable of relation is eccentricity. It is not my uniqueness which makes me of value to the whole but my power of relating. The nut and the screw form a perfect combination not because they are different, but because exactly fit into each other and together can perform a function which neither could perform alone, or which could perform half of alone or any part alone. It is not that the significance of the nut and screw is increased by their coming together, they have no significance at all unless they do come together. Another illustration is that of the specialist.