. As such, then, let us hail it with gratitude and relief;
but, on peril of our salvation, if I may not say of our immortality, let
us not repose upon a prospect which is, at best, one of renewed labours,
and trials, and efforts to be free even of that very life whose only
value is opportunity.

To estimate the value of individuality, we cannot do better than regard
man in his several mundane relations, supposing that either of these
might become the central, actuating focus of his being--his "ruling
love," as Swedenborg would call it--displacing his mere egoism, or
self-love, thrusting that more to the circumference, and identifying
him, so to speak, with that circle of interests to which all his
energies and affections relate. Outside this substituted Ego we are to
suppose that he has no conscience, no desire, no will. Just as the
entirely selfish man views the whole of life, so far as it can really
interest him solely in relation to his individual well-being, so our
supposed man of a family, of a society, of a Church, or a State, has no
eye for any truth or any interest more abstract or more individual than
that of which he may be rightly termed the incarnation. History shows
approximations to this ideal man. Such a one, for instance, I conceive
to have been Loyola; such another, possibly, is Bismarck. Now these
men have ceased to be individuals in their own eyes, so far as concerns
any value attaching to their own special individualities. They are
devotees. A certain "conversion" has been effected, by which from mere
individuals they have become "representative" men. And we--the
individuals--esteem them precisely in proportion to the remoteness from
individualism of the spirit that actuates them. As the circle of
interests to which they are "devoted" enlarges--that is to say, as the
dross of individualism is purged away--we accord them indulgence,
respect, admiration and love. From self to the family, from the family
to the sect or society, from the sect or society to the Church (in no
denominational sense) and State, there is the ascending scale and
widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an
individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his
individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit. The very modesty
which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our
addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some
utterly insignifi