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No one of to-day can say how low down in the scale of intelligence the human mind began to exercise its untried faculties; what apposition and deduction of thoughts it required to individualise the commonest objects that met the eye; even to determine that the body it animated was not an immovable part of the earth itself; to obtain fixed notions of distance, of color, light, and heat; to learn the properties and uses of plants, herbs, and fruits; even to see the sun sink out of sight with the sure faith that it would rise again.
Their imaginations individualise more, their affections are, in consequence, concentrated rather on leaders than on causes.... In politics, their enthusiasm is more naturally loyalty than patriotism. In history, they are even more inclined than men to dwell exclusively upon biographical incidents or characteristics as distinguished from the march of general causes."
It is very well to talk of the abstract idea of a man or of a God, but if you come to anything like an intelligible proposition, you must either individualise and define, or destroy the very idea you contemplate.
The difficulty becomes more inextricable in passing from specific little incidents to an estimation of the general nature of the man. The logicians lucidly describe definition as being per genus et differentiam. You have the characteristics in which all of the genus partake as common ground, and then you individualise your object by showing in what it differs from the others of the genus.
When an officer wanted a man for any particular duty running aloft, say, to communicate some slight order to the captains of the tops how easy, in that mob of incognitoes, to individualise "that white jacket," and dispatch him on the errand. Then, it would never do for me to hang back when the ropes were being pulled.
It was characteristic of Mr. Britling's nocturnal imagination that he should individualise this child quite sharply as rather plain and slender, with reddish hair, staring eyes, and its ribs crushed in a vivid and dreadful manner, pinned against the wall, mixed up with some bricks, only to be extracted, oh! horribly. But this was not fair! He had hurt no child! He had merely pitched out Mr.
I simply did not individualise. Men didn't notice me till I spoke. As if I was imperceptibly losing the essence of self. I still had some hold on the world. While it remained I must get word to Hobart. I did not delay. Straight to the office I went and paid for the cable. I was a bit ashamed. I had hoped. I had counted upon myself. I had trusted in the full strength of my individuality.
And he laughed, till I wondered what I could have said to amuse him so much. "Then you have learned to individualise soldiers already?" was his next question, put with a look which seemed to me inquisitive and impertinent. I did not know how to answer it, and left it unanswered; and the captain and I had the rest of our dance out in silence.
We see a machine as a whole, we call it by a name and individualise it; we look at our own limbs, and know that the combination forms an individual which springs from a single centre of reproductive action; we therefore assume that there can be no reproductive action which does not arise from a single centre; but this assumption is unscientific, and the bare fact that no vapour-engine was ever made entirely by another, or two others, of its own kind, is not sufficient to warrant us in saying that vapour-engines have no reproductive system.
It is for us not to lose ourselves in the crowd, since He has not lost us in it; but to appropriate, to individualise, to make our very own, the universality of His call to the world. It matters nothing to you what other men may do; it matters not to you how many others may be invited, and whether they may accept or may refuse.