"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd:
I stand and look at them long and long.
Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things:
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth."
The Whitman method of reaching naïveté is here so queerly illustrated that it seems worth while to stop a moment and point it out. Upon the least reflection, one must see that "animals" here must mean cows, and well-fed cows; for they are about the only animals in the world to whom these items would apply. For says Whitman, "not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things:" but suppose he were taking one of his favorite night-strolls in the woods of Bengal rather than of New Jersey, is it not more than probable that the first animal he met would be some wicked tiger not only dissatisfied, but perfectly demented with the mania of owning Whitman, the only kind of property the tiger knows? Seriously, when we reflect that property to the animal means no more than food or nest or lair, and that the whole wing-shaken air above us, the earth-surface about us, the earth-crust below us, the seas, and all, are alive day and night with the furious activity of animals quite as fairly demented with the mania of owning their property as men theirs; and that it is only the pampered beast who is not so demented,—the cow, for instance, who has her property duly brought to her so many times a day and has no more to do but to enjoy the cud thereof until next feed-time,—we have a very instructive model of methods by which poetry can make itself naïve.
And finally, what a conclusive light is shed upon the principles supporting Plato's community of property, when we bring forward the fact, daily growing more and more notable, that along with the modern passion for acquiring property has grown the modern passion of giving away property, that is, of charity? What ancient scheme ever dreamed of the multitudinous charitable organizations of some of our large cities? Charity has become organic and a part of the system of things: it has sometimes overflowed its bounds so that great social questions now pend as to how we shall direct the overflowing charitable instincts of society so as really to help the needy and not pamper the lazy: its public manifestations are daily, its private ministrations are endless.
Plato would have crushed the instinct of property; but the instinct, vital part of man's personality, as it is, has taken care of itself, has been cherished and encouraged by the modern cultus, and behold, instead of breeding a wild pandemonium of selfishness as Plato argued, it has in its orderly progress developed this wonderful new outgrowth of charity which fills every thoughtful man's heart with joy, because it covers such a multitude of the sins of the time.
I have been somewhat earnest—I fear tediously so—upon this matter, because I have seen what seem the greatest and most mischievous errors concerning it, receiving the stamp of men who usually think with clearness and who have acquired just authority in many premises.
It would not be fair to the very different matters which I have now to treat, to detail these errors; and I will only mention that if, with these principles of personality fairly fixed in one's mind, one reads for example the admirable Introduction of Professor Jowett to his translation of Plato's Republic, one has a perfect clew to many of the problems over which that translator labors with results which, I think, cannot be conclusive to his own mind.
Here, too, no one can be satisfied with the otherwise instructive chapter on Individuality in Professor Eucken's Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought. Eucken's direct reference to Plato's Republic is evidently made upon only a very vague recollection of Plato's doctrine, which is always dangerous. "The complete subordination and sacrifice of the individual expressed in Plato's idea of a state arose from his opposition to a tendency of the times which he considered pernicious, and so is characterized rather by moral energy and intensity of feeling than by the quiet and simple resignation to the objection which we find in the great men of the preceding period." But a mere opposition to a tendency of the times could never have bred this elaborate and sweeping annihilation of individuality; and it is forgotten that Plato is not here legislating for his times or with the least dream of the practical establishment of his Republic: again and again he declares his doubts as to the practicability of his plans for any time. No; he is building a republic for all time, and is consistently building upon the ruins of that personality which he was not sensible of except in its bad outcome as selfishness.
I must add, too, that there was an explicit theory of what was called Individuality among the Greeks; the phenomenon of the unaccountable differences of men from birth early attracted those sharp eyes, and the Stoics and others soon began to build in various directions from this basis. But just as the Greeks had a theory of harmony—though harmony was not developed until the last century—as Richter says somewhere that a man may contemplate the idea of death for twenty years, and only in some moment of the twenty-first suddenly have the realization of death come upon him, and shake his soul; so their theory of individuality must have been wholly amateur, not a working element, and without practical result. Surely, we seem in condition to say so with confidence if you run your minds back along this line of development which now comes to an end. For what have we done? We have interrogated Æschylus and Plato, whom we may surely call the two largest and most typic spirits of the whole Greek cultus, upon the main fact of personality; we have verified the abstract with the concrete by questioning them upon the most vital and well-known elements of personality: what do you believe about spiritual growth, about spiritual compactness, about true love, marriage, children, property? and we have received answers which show us that they have not yet caught a conception of what personality means, and that when they explicitly discuss individuality in their theories, it is a discussion of blind men about colors.