About People/Chapter 2

The reconciliation of individuality with the rights of others is one of life's problems. Its solution is constantly baffling us, yet it must be found, if our relations to home and society are to be adjusted on any equable division of mutual privileges. As Americans, we are prone to stand up for our rights, and take it for granted that everything should tend to our advancement; therefore, when we meet some one who cherishes similar ideas concerning his prerogatives, friction ensues. Whether the striking together shall bring success to each or end in destruction of ​one depends upon the adjustment of mutual claims.

Individuality in its nobler form is more than mere assertion of one's rights, — it becomes the maintenance of a principle. For that one works, contends, endures, dies. Often from conscious or unconscious obstinacy, or from self-love, sometimes from real absorption in a cause without regard to self, is the individuality merged in what one wishes to accomplish. Napoleon, Palissy, Fulton, Carlyle, Emerson, an anti-tobacconist or a pro-suffragist, are all alike instances of individuality. Without it one cannot think of a reformer, or of a leader in politics, charities, or social life. That it is often disguised may but intensify its power, for individuality may or may not be marked by self-control and tact. Just so far as it possesses such virtues, does it lead to power. It can be either angular or curved. When the former, we gain Simeon Stylites, monks of La Trappe, fanatics, persecutors, disagreeable ​friends; when curved, we gain our Philip Sidney, our Abraham Lincoln, our wise philanthropists, our calm enthusiasts, our guides and inspirers. It is intensity of feeling that can either be hidden or must find utterance of itself, and thus, in either case, it becomes the national expression of characteristics. It cannot be easily defined, because it is the "make up," — the whole of each one; it is the atmosphere that surrounds his moral, mental, and bodily qualities. It is both a derived and educated force. Whether it shall be our blessing or our curse depends upon the amount of righteous will-power exercised. Without it we lack the beauty of distinctiveness and the force of action; yet the want of recognition of each other's individuality is the efficient cause of many a discordant home and confused social action.

Each generation, as it is born, lives, and passes away, talks of individuality as if it were the product of itself alone, — a wonder only then to be beheld; regarding it as a distinct fact in ​man and a more easily recognized concept of thought, than the myriad beauty and separateness of leaf and stone, of cloud and snow-flake, the individuality of and in nature.

Somehow we all like to be called individual, if the word is applied as an adjective; the epithet original our modesty refuses, while to be told that we have idiosyncrasies or peculiarities excites our silent or outspoken ire. The frank information that the complexion is bad, tones of voice and manners annoying, is most disagreeable; but to be regarded as individual places us on a height from which we serenely take note of others' peculiarities. Individuality, idiosyncrasy, peculiarity, — they are the three terms in which our distinctiveness is rated, yet each falls short of the force of the word genius. We are right, however, in liking to be considered individual, for it is a recognition that we have striven for something; it is better to be on the heights — if noble heights — than on the plains. For something, that is ​the point. Who can tell whether it is a good or bad something?

The consensus of the competent is needed as judge of the right; but the hour may come when one alone is competent. Then the multitude stand aloof and gaze. Only when the voice of the wise is as the sound of many waters do the people praise. An individual who is such for the sake of growth, and not from aggressiveness or a liking for peculiarity, feels the sting in everything that separates him from his fellows; it is painful work to be alone, yet to be alone with one's truth often means living farther from men and nearer to God, and what begins as an act of self-protection becomes the religious deed and communion with the Most High. As we swing ourselves on to the heights we must often feel the pain that comes to us through the self-complacency of others, who misunderstand our simple longing to be true, our unconsciousness is disturbed, and we analyze our motives till afraid of ourselves. ​Self-inflicted torture should always bring, at last, clearer vision and thankfulness for release from self.

Long before individuality has attained such lustre that it becomes an attractive rather than a repellent force does it manifest itself in the early stages of home-life. The entreaty to the child to amuse himself, or to take care of himself, is the first open declaration of the rights of the parent against those of the child. Infantile graces and motherly love quickly adjust any difference of opinion; but, as years increase, the child finds himself under the shelter of law (ineffective it often is) which guarantees his right to a certain amount of physical and mental growth before he is used as a means of support for the family. The laboring classes chiefly reap the benefit of these laws, but in other ways than caring, for which necessity is often the justification, do the rights of parent and older child conflict. The school brings the difficulty. School-hours, home-lessons, ​music, drawing, dancing, sleeping, dressing, eating, leave literally no time for the girl's mending or the boy's carpentering jobs about the house. The dining-table is almost the only place where meets a modern family bent on modern education. The theatre, the winter dance, and the summer hotel, rather than the home, furnish recreation and rest, and cause the little sympathy that too often exists between children and their parents, who are spoken of as old or nervous. We calmly allow this result to be reached, feeling that the child's individuality has demanded it; that it is right to allow him to be snobbish, snubbish, and patronizing to commonplace friends and parents; to be cross, nervous, dyspeptic, because he must have time for study. It is far better to maintain him a year longer in school, as an offset to the minutes consumed in doing family errands, than to allow him to evade them. Notwithstanding, the child is right in feeling that his school is of the utmost importance, ​with which family-life should interfere as little as possible, and parents must submit to personal losses in convenience and enjoyment because of the "schooling." The study gained, the adult child has a right to decide for himself on his future occupation, unhampered by aught but parental advice. How often it is said: "I should have been an engineer, lawyer, mechanic, if my father had not wished me to do otherwise." Far wiser that the young man should struggle longer in the pursuit for self-support than bear all through life the burden of wishing he had been something else, because there seemed need of immediate decision, either from pecuniary reasons or regard for his father's wishes.

That parent makes a fortunate discovery who early sees that, while it is her duty to train the child as a child, to admonish and punish, yet that, as the years go by, her duties as direct guide lessen, and life-experience becomes the greater teacher. It is often ​said that grown-up families cannot live together, because of the want of this recognition of each other's individuality. The home which unites many varying interests, in which each feels that his or her peculiar hobby meets will consideration and fairness, is the home that is richest in intellectual wealth and affection, — the home which broadens others, into which it is a liberal education to enter, — the home that makes coöperation possible.

But parents do not show that unbiassed judgment of their children's divergence from them which they manifest in regard to strangers. The adult son or daughter feels that his or her measure of difference is a source of poignant regret. That there must be regret is natural, but that the adult child should always be uncomfortable, under the added force of keen bitterness in his father's feeling, hampers his own harmonious growth; he grows, but with a sense of doing injury to those he loves best.

The legal and friendly aspects and advan​tages of the relation between parents and children have often been obstructed by a semi-religious sentiment. The parent's obligation to the child is far greater than that of the child to the parent; parental disregard of the child's individualism springing often from his feeling that the child is a direct gift to him from God, and that responsibility is lessened in proportion to unconscious exercise of any duty or capacity. God is the great law-maker, but the execution of his human laws he leaves to man, whose responsibility of giving to each child the opportunity for full development is thereby increased a thousand-fold. To the child who never asked to be born, should a wise, free growth be allowed just as long as the parent lives. What right has one to bring an individual soul into the world and then through affection needlessly curb it? The child's obedience used to be demanded on the ground of authority involved in the relationship of birth; now it is demanded on the ground of ​affection, and in this way the full, free nature of affection is lessened. Never ask another to fulfil a duty for love's sake, but for the sake of right. Love is broad, but right glorifies it, and in every act of affection there should be a foundation of right. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, and friends, should never appeal to each other to remit any of the individuality of each with the words, "for my sake." Give it up if it is right; retain it if it is right. There are, however, questions of expediency which often must be settled for the young by an appeal to their affection. Only by development of the moral and intellectual nature, of mechanical skill and of religious trust, can all sides of the individual be rounded into that graceful freedom of action which leaves to others as much space as it demands for itself.

In a family, the grown-up sons and daughters who possess strong individualism do not always have the opportunity to learn through their own experience. The very breakfast ​loses its flavor if the same freedom is not allowed to sons in discussion of the morning's politics which the father claims for himself. After the day's toil, if the young man prefers the solitude of his own room to the inconsequent hum of the parlor, his mother sighs; if friends are with him, his sister wishes they would remain in the drawing-room. Often a daughter in her father's house cannot call anything absolutely her own. Her time is for others. Money! Her father may give her hundreds of dollars as spasmodic gifts, and nothing as an allowance. She may have permission to buy an oil-painting when her heart yearns for a water-color. She can have credit at certain establishments, but she has not $5.00 cash in her pocket wherewith to buy an ice-cream, a ribbon, or a book. She asks for money for the contribution-box and is told that her father will attend to the family alms-giving. She must invite guests rather than be invited, as her parents like her presence at ​the daily meals. She may study art, but must not go to a life school. Education has been bestowed, but, when she wishes to use it in spheres apart from the home, her parents are unwilling. Affection is the restraining power by which the actions, charities, and occupations of the adult child are limited. The father would be none the less venerated if no direct appeal was made to him for each necessity of life; nor would the desire for self-support torment so many if each daughter had a certain part of the family income. Then her gifts, her charities, her personal expenses, and her self-denials, would be measured one against the other, and each act would be her own.

Yet it is from affection, from the pride of support, from the joy of giving, from the pleasure in feeling, that the father, as parent and householder, has created his home, that he misses, unconsciously, the balance of proportion between his own individuality and that ​of his children. Nor is it only his adult children who are thus repressed. The same generosity leads him to prefer gifts of money to his wife, rather than a balancing of accounts which credits her with so much due for her exertions in the household. Does he, moreover, always feel that some of the day belongs to her as much as his evening hours belong to him? Somewhere or other crop out his rights as an individual, which the wife should zealously guard; but are hers guarded as much in return? Unless a wife is considered to have as absolute a right to her individuality as the husband has to his, marriage can never be the beneficent institution for which some people consider it was designed. The same love that would protect in health, and that would watch anxiously in case of life and death, will be silent or cross when home cares and perplexities weary. It is the little rights of each other which we ignore.

​Again, as want of deference to others' individualities are the silent looks, the long gaps in conversation, the taking up one's hat and disappearing on the part of men, and the sudden absorption in mending, children, or books on the part of women, — all from want of respect for each other's characteristics, which it is only courteous to recognize as the right of each individual. Silences only deepen individualities that are on the wrong side of a subject. Frank, generous conversation, with ability to be just as pleasant the next moment as if difference of opinion had not been expressed, helps each to see his or her mistakes, to understand whether he or she is acting from love of ambition, from obstinacy, or for truth's sake. Homes must learn the impersonal art of discussion, which makes the intellect grow, and leaves love and belief in other's sincerity untouched. The stronger are we, the more do we feel the force of the French proverb, "noblesse oblige;" not that the person is aware he ​belongs to the noblesse, the world's greatest and noblest, through the insignia of character; but because, being unconsciously noble and great, he cannot help being tender to others; strength makes tenderness.

Another phase of the rights of individuality among members of the same household relates to questions of religious belief. The parent is bound to mould his child into the parent's highest ideal while it is very young; but, also, must he soon begin to lay before it the fact that men as conscientious or as wise as himself think differently. It may puzzle the child; but unconsciously will it be the foundation of his later liberality in judging of mankind. The parent's emphasis can always indicate that his conviction of truth is the only one his intellectual honesty justifies him in holding. Thus the abstract law of the relativity of truth, and its positive, personal application to the individual, are both maintained. While the child is young he expresses his rela​tion to the family by going to the family church. Perhaps it is his first lesson in learning that individualism, within certain limits, can express itself within an organization, and that organization and coöperation are the fulcrums of humanity.

But when the child, as adult, has thought and arrived at different conclusions from his parent, the latter should place no fetters of restraint or affection upon his will. The constitutional tendencies of varying minds will carry them to various denominations. The conservative and the radical cannot consort in their underlying views of philosophy. The High or Catholic Church must exist for those who lean on authority; the Broad Church for those who are independent; Radicalism for those who are willing to follow thought to its more ultimate conclusions; oddities in church organization for those who must invent a sect for their own personality. Homœopathy and mysticism are akin, as are allopathy and ration​alism. Loyalty to truth must compel one to worship where he shall find emphasis laid upon his essentials. But the individuality that goes through several creeds, proclaiming each alike, should wait until assured beyond recall that it has reached its final truth. Not the sprouting, but the full blossoming, mind becomes the willingly recognized leader. The sprouts of growth often prove abortive. Intense individuality, which makes one search for truth, keeps one from rendering apparent homage to another's truth on the plea that religion is only a matter of life, rather than of intellectual opinion. A doctrine in the long changing of human interests is a greater force than a man, and one's individuality and one's reason must be very slight if loyalty to ideas can be subserved to the personal gratification of self-improvement, supposed to be effected by regular attendance on a service whose creed is disbelieved. The line of difference should always be drawn at the farthest point; ​all possibilities of convergence should be accepted, and individuality should surround itself with an atmosphere of deference for every form of thought, and of reverence for every noble deed.

In spheres apart from home or church life is the want of individuality felt in its more humorous aspects, though its lack may be as harmful as elsewhere. One of the chief characteristics of modern society is its sameness. The groups may be different, but the people in each group are outwardly similar; not only, on the whole, do we dress alike, but we eat and live alike. If our neighbor has moved into a Queen Anne house, we must have at least a room furnished in Queen Anne style; men wear black dress-coats; women, soft-toned hues; our embroidery is in olive crewels; and we eat oysters everywhere, because it is so much safer to imitate than to originate. Most of us have no original capacity. We admire or praise gregariously. We are like a flock ​of sheep, and not always does the first sheep jump the right fence. We are cowards, and neither praise nor blame independently. A little reading-club was studying a certain poem, and one of its members said, "I think it is awfully stupid!" Then went round the whisper, "Isn't she bright, funny?" If each had dared to say her own thought, it would have been just what this lady said; and the universal fun would have been denominated common-sense. There is affectation in euphuistic words and simpering tones which sometimes passes muster for a while, but only to cover the person with final disgrace. The literary criticism of a magazine or newspaper column shows whether the writer is stamped with an irrepressible individuality that puts itself into what he writes, or whether he is fearful, and praises gently all alike.

It is very hard to maintain a graceful but true individuality under the soft pressure of society and frightened friends; but, if the ​world is to be any better for our living in it, it will only be so in proportion to our distinctness of thought, style, and mode of expression. Then society becomes rich and brilliant; the bon-mots of the dinner-table whet the appetite, and the opinions of the evening coterie become laws for those who have no time, or are too lazy to think. There must, however, be a force that shall prevent our individuality from too speedy expression of itself, or from interfering with the rights of another, or preventing his expression of himself. Conventionality is the rightful restraint upon individuality, the heavy armor of what has been, not the elastic armor of what one likes; but, as with any other coat of mail, it should not be thrown off until the wearer is able to exist unguarded. The laws of custom are scabbards that sheathe the cutting weapon.

Nothing should grow more slowly than individuality, or have its steel more finely tempered. An individuality of crude opinion or ​of words is not the material which moves the ages. Conscientiousness should guide its growth, self-sacrifice illumine its path, and love of beauty moderate its pace. Fanatics, reformers, constantly injure their work by insistence on the rights of their own sacred cause, without regard to the conventions and amenities of life. The reforms of a century hence will not be accomplished in the despotic manner in which many have been, and still are, carried on. The liberal leagues, the temperance cause, and many religious movements, are sullied by the intensity with which one would put his right into some one's else being. Many a society is started to carry out some special individuality, which by honest meditation and compromise could have been incorporated with some already existing institution, and thus have been saved the device of a new name and the expense of a new set of officers, etc. The organized individualism often succeeds, but oftener is short-lived. ​How careful ought one, then, to be in forming new plans, lest they become a cause of social stoppage or discord!

All men and women should feel that in some manner or other they are bound to stand for some truth or deed; that in some way they help humanity; that they are always to live on the noblest heights of life, with purpose ever in view. It may be a general or a special purpose; but there must be some one motive besides the indefinite desire for indefinite goodness, which shall shape out an individuality. Only those men and women whose life-work is clear before them can afford to lay it by, as the side duties of life spring up for immediate attention. An intense purpose waits its fulfilment, and, in waiting and ripening, nourishes all the little seeds of endeavor, and refreshes the waste places in others' lives. There cannot be individuality without intensity of feeling or conviction. Our modern life demands such a complexity of interests and ​such a generality of knowledge that the mass of people, the non-active reformers, forget to care for one subject more than another, and so become just like everybody else. Half of originality is simply daring to be true, simply saying just what one thinks, but in a pleasant way. "He said just what I thought" is the frequent reflexion made on bright people, who were no brighter than the listener, but who were truer and less self-conscious. Obituaries, resolutions of societies on valuable deceased members, and eulogies on the living, have all the same flavor, as if every one were a twin.

Although meek acceptance and repetition of opinion can be tolerated in an evening party, it becomes intolerable in committee business and parish meetings. From laziness or cowardice both men and women invent excuses in order to account for their absence whenever matters requiring decisive action or opinion are likely to occur. The plea of a previous engagement or a headache has ​become an equivalent for a falsehood. If we never spoke or acted without previous thought (though the thought might be in the distant background of accumulations of experience), and then gave our opinion, and did our deed from intensity of conviction, but with an open-mindedness to constant new impressions and experiences, men and women would oftener stand for some one definite mode of thinking and acting. Conscience is the foundation of individuality. Let that be developed as carefully as a sense of correct English; then, like each one's English speech, it will have its own tone and quality.

If we only dared to be honest, society would gain in intellectual and moral strength. We all think mightily after we have left a discussion. Do we never despise ourselves that we have lacked the moral courage to stand for our convictions, and do we never hate ourselves that we have none? When one has the courage of his convictions he becomes a ​leader somewhere, for evil or good. One of the most confirmed inebriates in a "Washingtonian home" had a peculiar fluency in prayer, and led at all their meetings.

To avoid monotony in ourselves we must seek expansion of our ideas and deeds; but only by being mindful of others' rights and needs. Liberty loses its value without the added grace of tenderness in its action. To grow ourselves in our own way, to satisfy the wishes of those who hold a different ideal from that towards which we are striving, — there is the difficulty! And it is only solved by patient love. The home, with its varying interests, can be rendered happy only by learning the secret of the recognition of each other's rights and peculiarities, and that each has a claim to self-development but to a certain point. When sickness, death, or poverty in the home check further progress in some special line of work, no complaint should be uttered; the inevitable must be accepted in brave silence, with the re​membrance that to fight against it is self-destruction. When free growth means only unlimited selfishness it is an evil to one's self and an annoyance to others.

It is much easier for those who have a mission to fulfil to prepare for that than for those who, because of their indefiniteness, must seek for some special work; yet only as work becomes specialized is it perfect. A woman who, in fancying herself an individual, places any art, profession, or business above that of making her home a centre of affection and brightness, fortified by good, plain cooking, drifts into selfishness.

In order not to inflict upon others our individualities, hobbies, peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, — however they may degenerate, as does the meaning of each word, — the laws of solidarity and compromise must always be observed. The first is a broader law than "Do unto others as you would have them do to you;" do to others more than you want for ​yourself. The solidarity of mankind demands that any personality should gird on the panoply of good manners; and it is because of the lack of this much praised but rare possession that individuals become so disagreeable, while the purposes for which they strive may be those which all hold.

The law of compromise ever adjusts the balance between individuality and solidarity; the first preventing any mean yielding to low ends or unworthy motives; the latter making perceptible the relationship of individuality to the highest possible standard of personal morality and devotion to noble ends.

From such a union of forces comes a far higher development than if individuality had remained aloof in shining isolation. The bud of purpose is deepened in color from its secrecy; self-assertion is maintained with firm but gentle touch; the constant accretion of self-control strengthens every fibre, though by processes that seem tedious to the young ​aspirant to full and free expression of himself in thought and action.

The law of compromise leads to no deceit. It is the self-protecting garment of society, worn at home and abroad; it is not the abandonment of a principle, but the waiting until the arrow can go straight to the mark.

Indefiniteness belongs to youth. With growing years come definiteness and fixedness; with middle life, wisdom and tenderness. The earlier qualities lose their sharp angles, though their centre remains more deeply buried than ever in intent. Fanaticism ceases, enthusiasm grows, help is rendered to all, not to one. Still the struggle between heredity and present ​circumstances overshadows us. The moment demands our yielding; but our inheritance raises our individuality into bristling prominence. We are prone to sarcasm; our grandfathers were; it is part of us; but the moment shows we should lay it aside. Which will conquer, the inherited or the educated individuality? Each has his own peculiar passion for pleasure, meanness, or extravagance, and the inherited and the educated must wrestle, step by step, until, by repetition and aggregation of results, the victory is settled forever on one or the other side of individuality. The evil effects of heredity can be lessened, not only from generation to generation, but from year to year, while its blessed influences can be strengthened. As science is eradicating hereditary disease, so is education working upon evil mental peculiarities; even now it is only cowardice that says: I have a miserable disposition, because my grandparents had ​the same. An individual to make use of another individual as an excuse! Very much of a slave is he to himself if he allow himself to employ such a pretext in palliation of his want of effort.

The rightful extent of individuality must ever remain a varying line; yet a long view of life demands that we prepare ourselves by constant progress to be useful and honored; and for that must we have time and opportunity for expression of the best that is within us. Because truth is relative will we work for what is our truth; work, always ready to give it up if nearer claims arise; always able to keep it until the moment comes again for action. The laws of solidarity and compromise will stand as sentinels over others' rights and needs. With individuality they form the triad that labors for and with each other, that all may grow into fuller individual life, each home freer and happier, each church ​more enduring, each member of society working through definite deeds and thought into that clearness of vision which reflects the harmonies of the universe.