A branch cut from its neighboring branch is necessarily cut away from the whole tree. In the same way a human being severed from just one other human has dropped from the whole community. Now the branch is cut off by someone else, but a man separates himself from his neighbor by his own hatred or rejection, not realizing that he has thereby severed himself from the wider society of fellow citizens. Only there is this gift we have from Zeus who brought together the human community: we can grow back again to our neighbor and resume our place in the complement of the whole. Too often repeated, though, such separation makes it harder to unite and restore the divided part. In sum, the branch which stays with the tree from the beginning of its growth and shares its transpiration is not the same as the branch which is cut off and then redrafted, whatever the gardeners say.
Share their stock, but not the their doctrines.
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