"Get thee behind me,
Satan." If the fruit have a special flavor of such ambitious pungency
that the sweets and acids cannot appear through it, be sure that to come
at this fruit no young Wilhelm Meister will purloin keys. If one be so
much an Individual that he wellnigh ceases to be a Man, we shall not
admire him. It is the same in mental as in physical feature. Let there,
by all means, be slight divergence from the common type; but by all
means let it be no more than a slight divergence. Too much is monstrous:
even a very slight excess is what we call _ugliness_. Gladly I perceive
in my neighbor's face, voice, gait, manner, a certain charm of
peculiarity; but if in any the peculiarity be so great as to suggest
a doubt whether he be not some other creature than man, may he not be
neighbor of mine!

A little of this surface nature suffices; yet that little cannot be
spared. Its first office is to guard frontiers. We must not lie quite
open to the inspection or invasion of others: yet, were there no medium
of unlikeness interposed between one and another, privacy would be
impossible, and one's own bosom would not be sacred to himself. But
Nature has secured us against these profanations; and as we have locks
to our doors, curtains to our windows, and, upon occasion, a passport
system on our borders, so has she cast around each spirit this veil to
guard it from intruding eyes, this barrier to keep away the feet of
strangers. Homer represents the divinities as coming invisibly to
admonish their favored heroes; but Nature was beforehand with the poet,
and every one of us is, in like manner, a celestial nature walking
concealed. Who sees _you_, when you walk the street? Who would walk the
street, did be not feel himself fortressed in a privacy that no foreign
eyes can enter? But for this, no cities would be built. Society,
therefore, would be impossible, save for this element, which seems to
hinder society. Each of us, wrapt in his opaque individuality, like
Apollo or Athene in a blue mist, remains hidden, if he will; and
therefore do men dare to come together.

But this superficial element, while securing privacy to the pure nature,
also aids it to expression. It emphasizes the outlines of Personality by
gentle contrast. It is like the shadow in the landscape, without which
all the sunbeams of heaven could not reveal with precision a single
object. Assured lovers resort to happy banter and light oppositions, to
give thems