n my head there is a permanent opposition-party; and whenever I take
any step or come to any decision--though I may have given the matter
mature consideration--it afterwards attacks what I have done, without,
however, being each time necessarily in the right. This is, I suppose,
only a form of rectification on the part of the spirit of scrutiny;
but it often reproaches me when I do not deserve it. The same thing,
no doubt, happens to many others as well; for where is the man who
can help thinking that, after all, it were better not to have done
something that he did with great deliberation:

_Quid tam dextro pede concipis ut te
Conatus non poeniteat votique peracti_?

* * * * *

Why is it that _common_ is an expression of contempt? and that
_uncommon, extraordinary, distinguished_, denote approbation? Why is
everything that is common contemptible?

_Common_ in its original meaning denotes that which is peculiar to all
men, _i.e_., shared equally by the whole species, and therefore an
inherent part of its nature. Accordingly, if an individual possesses
no qualities beyond those which attach to mankind in general, he is
a _common man. Ordinary_ is a much milder word, and refers rather
to intellectual character; whereas _common_ has more of a moral
application.

What value can a creature have that is not a whit different from
millions of its kind? Millions, do I say? nay, an infiniture of
creatures which, century after century, in never-ending flow, Nature
sends bubbling up from her inexhaustible springs; as generous with
them as the smith with the useless sparks that fly around his anvil.

It is obviously quite right that a creature which has no qualities
except those of the species, should have to confine its claim to an
existence entirely within the limits of the species, and live a life
conditioned by those limits.

In various passages of my works,[1] I have argued that whilst a lower
animal possesses nothing more than the generic character of its
species, man is the only being which can lay claim to possess an
individual character. But in most men this individual character comes
to very little in reality; and they may be almost all ranged under
certain classes: _ce sont des especes_. Their thoughts and desires,
like their faces, are those of the species, or, at any rate, those
of the class to which they belong; and accordingly, they are of a
trivial, every-day, common charac