vity of the stranger is connected the
phenomenon which indeed belongs chiefly, but not indeed exclusively, to
the mobile man: namely, that often the most surprising disclosures and
confessions, even to the character of the confessional disclosure, are
brought to him, secrets such as one carefully conceals from every
intimate. Objectivity is by no means lack of sympathy, for that is
something quite outside and beyond either subjective or objective
relations. It is rather a positive and particular manner of sympathy. So
the objectivity of a theoretical observation certainly does not mean
that the spirit is a _tabula rasa_ on which things inscribe their
qualities, but it means the full activity of a spirit working according
to its own laws, under conditions in which accidental dislocations and
accentuations have been excluded, the individual and subjective
peculiarities of which would give quite different pictures of the same
object.

d) _Freedom from convention._--One can define objectivity also as
freedom. The objective man is bound by no sort of proprieties which can
prejudice for him his apprehension, his understanding, his judgment of
the given. This freedom which permits the stranger to experience and
deal with the relation of nearness as though from a bird's-eye view,
contains indeed all sorts of dangerous possibilities. From the
beginnings of things, in revolutions of all sorts, the attacked party
has claimed that there has been incitement from without, through foreign
emissaries and agitators. As far as that is concerned, it is simply an
exaggeration of the specific role of the stranger; he is the freer man,
practically and theoretically; he examines the relations with less
prejudice; he submits them to more general, more objective, standards,
and is not confined in his action by custom, piety, or precedents.

e) _Abstract relations._--Finally, the proportion of nearness and
remoteness which gives the stranger the character of objectivity gets
another practical expression in the more abstract nature of the relation
to him. This is seen in the fact that one has certain more general
qualities only in common with the stranger, whereas the relation with
those organically allied is based on the similarity of just those
specific differences by which the members of an intimate group are
distinguished from those who do not share that intimacy. All personal
relations whatsoever are determined according to this scheme, how