However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. When we are sick or very young or very old, we must depend on the support of others. There is no significant division between us and other people, because our basic natures are the same. If we wish to ensure everyone's peace and happiness, we need to cultivate a healthy respect for the diversity of our peoples and cultures, founded on an understanding of this fundamental sameness of all human beings.
In nature there is a fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us. Religions are given to mankind so as to accelerate the process of realisation of fundamental unity.
Republics have a longer life and enjoy better fortune than principalities, because they can profit by their greater internal diversity. They are the better able to meet emergencies.
If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly back to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is manifold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many.
While local economies may experience significant price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States, given its size and diversity.