When you tell a person that he resembles so-and-so, he is always surprised. He does not see the slightest similarity. Were he to meet his double in the street, he would pass him without recognition. It would be the same with his mental counterpart; in fact, most men are so slightly acquainted with themselves, and are so lost in the crowd, that they no longer know the way home. They are merely composite photographs of the people they have met. Unconscious actors, they speak the words and imitate the feelings of those around them until they lose the cue of their own proper parts.
This deplorable lack of Individuality is the fruitful cause of many a failure and much unhappiness. It arises from a lack of self-knowledge, self-confidence, and self-respect, and is constantly leading men astray in their plans of life.
The complaint is often made that men deceive each other; but they deceive themselves far more. They imagine they have talents which they do not possess, and overlook those which are their own; they attempt what is beyond their powers, and allow those they have to rust through want of use. They believe that is their own which they
have but borrowed, and go forth to till imaginary fields, leaving their own garden-plots lie fallow.
How much better to live one’s own life, to be oneself, to cultivate what abilities we have rather than to waste time on those we have not, to learn the limits of our own capacities and insure success by working within them! The advice of the sages of all times has been to swear by the words of no teacher, to call no man Master, to think our own thoughts, to be true to ourselves, to make our own felicity, and not to run about the world trying to share that of others by aping their sentiments and actions.
The greatest teachers have not desired disciples, but friends. They have never exerted authority, and where they could not persuade or convince, they have sought no proselytes. To them the independance of the individual mind has been of more importance than the dissemination of any article of faith or element of instruction. Spinoza, Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, our own Emerson, have all in spirit joined with Goethe in singing that the secret of the highest happiness of man rests in the preservation of his own free personality:—
Höchstes Glück der Erdenkinder
Sei nur die Persönlichkeit.
Peer in this august company, deeper than any in his devotion, speaking at every hazard, I name my late friend, Walt Whitman, the “singer of one’s self,” “chanter of Personality,” “self-balanced for all contingencies,” holding creeds and schools in abeyance, ceasing not till death.
The man of independent mind and strong personality is never trivial or vulgar, no matter what his education or social position. The artist who plays solo commands our attention. The plant which is indigenous is alone strong and hardy; exotics are starvelings. Individuality is contagious, and it is bracing and stimulating to meet such a character. His presence is a benefit to a whole company, and a company of such is worth a regiment of nonentities. The richest agricultural community I ever saw was in France, where every peasant cultivated his own little field; and the poorest was in our own country, where every man was trying to feed his cattle on somebody else’s range.