ity of which
persons are exponents; while, on the other hand, all evil epithets
suggest division and separation. Of this nature all titles of honor, all
symbols that command homage and obedience on earth, are pensioners. How
could the claims of kings survive successions of Stuarts and Georges,
but for a royalty in each peasant's bosom that pleads for its poor image
on the throne?

In the high sense, no man is great save he that is a large continent of
this absolute humanity. The common nature of man it is; yet those are
ever, and in the happiest sense, uncommon men, in whom it is liberally
present.

But every man, besides the nature which constitutes him man, has, so to
speak, another nature, which constitutes him a particular individual. He
is not only like all others of his kind, but, at the same time, unlike
all others. By physical and mental feature he is distinguished,
insulated; he is endowed with a quality so purely in contrast with the
common nature of man, that in virtue of it he can be singled out from
hundreds of millions, from all the myriads of his race. So far, now, as
one is representative of absolute humanity, he is a Person; so far
as, by an element peculiar to himself, he is contrasted with absolute
humanity, he is an Individual. And having duly chanted our _Credo_
concerning man's pure and public nature, let us now inquire respecting
this dividing element of Individuality,--which, with all the force it
has, strives to cut off communication, to destroy unity, and to make of
humanity a chaos or dust of biped atoms.

Not for a moment must we make this surface nature of equal estimation
with the other. It is secondary, _very_ secondary, to the pure substance
of man. The Person first in order of importance; the Individual next,--

"Proximus huic, longo sed proximus intervallo,"--

"next with an exceeding wide remove."

Take from Epaminondas or Luther all that makes him man, and the
rest will not be worth selling to the Jews. Individuality is an
accompaniment, an accessory, a red line on the map, a fence about the
field, a copyright on the book. It is like the particular flavors of
fruits,--of no account but in relation to their saccharine, acid, and
other staple elements. It must therefore keep its place, or become
an impertinence. If it grow forward, officious, and begin to push in
between the pure nature and its divine ends, at once it is a meddling
Peter, for whom there is no due greeting but