The Potency of Individuality

— In the novel of Robert Elsmere, the uncanny old squire is described as having spent a lifetime in the endeavor to discover and formulate the law that governs human evidence, the law which should account for its general untrustworthiness. I believe it is usually considered to be a fact derogatory to the nature of the race that no two members of it can tell a story alike. Whatever be the cause of this frailty, it is pretty certain it must be due to some quality which the sons — and daughters — of men all possess, so common is its manifestation. It has occurred to me, in a moment of more than ordinary daring as to speculation, that possibly this peculiarity is susceptible of an interpretation which so relates it to the deeper problems of the soul’s essence and destiny that we may profitably study it with some other feeling than our accustomed irritation at it as a weakness and a folly. It seems as if it might be very significant as to the meaning and value of individuality as a factor in the universe. All extraneous phenomena are little able to affect the individuality of whosoever would bear witness to them, but his perception and report of them alter them as if they had been subjected to a chemical process. The elements of his nature act upon them, and turn them out in such form as is the inevitable result of that contact and action. As the soul of each man, the ego of each, differs from that of another, so does each perform a different trick upon the phenomenon which it first perceives, then receives into its mind, and then attempts to reproduce in speech. No outward thing has substance enough to withstand this transforming power of the individual. No verity of the senses is true enough to overcome the magic spell wrought by the witnessing personality. If you but raise your hand, you do not raise it in the same manner for me as for my brother. There is something in him which looks through his eyes and sees a gesture unlike the one I see. His tongue is of the same fibre as his brain, and obeys the same thrill of vital force, and it tells a story with other phrase than mine, and which carries another impression, when we both seek to report what we have seen. What then is the significance of this intense emphasis granted to individuality ; this essence which, itself unchanged, transmutes all the experiences of life and all the visible wonders of heaven and earth “ into something rich and strange,” or something poor and vulgar, according to the law of its own being ? Not even an earthquake can daunt it, nor the thunders of Jove constrain it to permit sight or report except as it will. It disdains to take its rule of evidence from facts that have to do with earth and matter, and its flightiest rendering of them seems to maintain its right to control them in virtue of being one with the Spirit which moved the phenomena in the beginning, and offered them to the human mind to consider and bear witness concerning them. Is it then too bold a conclusion that individuality, so curiously and powerfully accentuated force, is indestructible and immortal ?