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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: unlikes appear to fancy one another quite as gratuitously as do
likes. Connubial couples are often anything but twin souls. Yet our
own dual use of the word "like" bears historic witness to the
contrary. For in this expression we have a record from early Gothic
times that men liked others for being like themselves. Since then,
our feelings have not changed materially, although our mode of
showing them is slightly less intense. In those simple days
stranger and enemy were synonymous terms, and their objects were
received in a corresponding spirit. In our present refined
civilization we hurl epithets instead of spears, and content
ourselves with branding as heterodox the opinions of another which
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