No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recesses of another mind.

Bennett’s line underscores the opacity of inner life and the limits of intimacy. Even in loving relationships, complete transparency would be intolerable: the mind contains contradictory impulses, petty resentments, fleeting cruelties, and irrational fears that are normally softened by privacy and self-editing. The quote suggests that social harmony depends partly on partial knowledge—on tact, selective disclosure, and the charitable fictions by which we live with one another. It also hints at a modern psychological realism: people are not unified, wholly knowable selves, and the demand to “know everything” about another person can become a form of violence rather than love.