Margaret – It’s one of the most interesting things in the world. The truth is that there is a greater outer life that you and I have never touched—a life in which telegrams and anger count. Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marriage settlements, death, death duties. So far I am clear. But here my difficulty. This outer life, tough obviously horrid, often seems the real one—there’s grit in it. It does breed character. Do personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?
Howards End ~ EM Forster
This theme of inner world and outer world I used to think a matter of values: the outer world valued reputation and achievement and reason while the inner world valued people and relationships and emotions. But then I realised they're more than values. They are worlds; they're worldviews.
Those of the outer world inhabit the external world we all live in. They receive and contribute life to what's outside of them, to their societies and countries and companies. They rise to the heights above. Those of the inner world inhabit the internal world we all contain but don't all tap into. They find and create life from what inside them—and others—an unseen, abstract realm. They delve into the depths within.
The outer world is easy to explain because it's all about explanation. The inner world is more difficult because it's about experience. The outer world is the head of the body; the inner world is the heart. The inner world seeks the mind and heart of a matter, of a person. The outer world deals with matter and material; the inner world works with ideas and individuals.
Helen – I knew it was impossible, because personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger
Throughout the book, Helen and Henry are clear antitheses of each other; even their names juxtapose each other. Helen is the inner world; Henry is the outer. They antagonise each other because they're so different. They don't understand each other. Helen can't stand Henry because he doesn't understand her. But also because she doesn't understand him. They are both their own worldviews, and, since they don't understand the other worldview, they don't understand the other person. They encounter each other, but their exchanges never go to that deeper level that Helen requires. They can't seem to connect.
Margaret, though, is the mediator. She's of the inner world but emerges to embrace the outer world. It's easier for her to reach out and touch the absolute world than it is for Henry to reach in and embrace the abstract realm.
There are moments when the inner life actually “pays,” when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use
Because Margaret knows herself and the inner world so well, she knows where it falls just as she knows where it transcends. She knows it's incomplete and messy. She understands the value of both worlds and learns how to inhabit them concurrently. While Helen and Henry collide with each other, she learns how the two are supposed to coalesce.
She sees the other side. Neither side is perfect. They're different, and it's for that very reason they ought not be opposites. For that reason, they ought to rely on each other and be partners, complementing and compensating for each other. Margaret find the connection between the inner world and the outer world
To Margaret, this life was to remain a real force. She could not despise it, as Helen and Tibby affected to do. It fostered such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization. They form character, too; Margaret could not doubt it: they kept the solid from becoming sloppy. How dare Schlegels despise Wilcoxes, when it takes all sorts to make a world?
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