Two Alien Perspectives On Humanity

"Be not afraid of the strangers with single bodies....Rather pity that race, who are not beasts but can think, and thus know that they will never know oneness."

-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 367-520 AT p. 520.

"Above all, O people of Arvel, never pity the beings on Earth. If you do, then sorrow will drown you. They know so little of love. They cannot ever know more."

-Poul Anderson, "The Ways of Love" IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, November 1981), pp. 117-147 AT p. 147.

Each of these quoted passages completes its text. The Didonian says, "...pity...," whereas the Arvelian says, "...never pity..."! We can never know oneness, at least not the Didonian kind. We know little of love according to the Arvelians because they are naturally monogamous. We are not. 

But we are homo sapiens, not either of these extra-solar intelligent species imagined by Anderson.