Further, it follows from this that a man’s individuality does not rest upon the principle of individuation alone, and therefore is not altogether phenomenal in its nature.  On the contrary, it has its roots in the thing-in-itself, in the will which is the essence of each individual.  The character of this individual is itself individual.  But how deep the roots of individuality extend is one of the questions which I do not undertake to answer.

In this connection it deserves to be mentioned that even Plato, in his own way, represented the individuality of a man as a free act.[1] He represented him as coming into the world with a given tendency, which was the result of the feelings and character already attaching to him in accordance with the doctrine of metempsychosis.  The Brahmin philosophers also express the unalterable fixity of innate character in a mystical fashion.  They say that Brahma, when a man is produced, engraves his doings and sufferings in written characters on his skull, and that his life must take shape in accordance therewith.  They point to the jagged edges in the sutures of the skull-bones as evidence of this writing; and the purport of it, they say, depends on his previous life and actions.  The same view appears to underlie the Christian, or rather, the Pauline, dogma of Predestination.

[Footnote 1:  Phaedrus and Laws, bk. x.]

But this truth, which is universally confirmed by experience, is attended with another result.  All genuine merit, moral as well as intellectual, is not merely physical or empirical in its origin, but metaphysical; that is to say, it is given a priori and not a posteriori; in other words, it lies innate and is not acquired, and therefore its source is not a mere phenomenon, but the thing-in-itself.  Hence it is that every man achieves only that which is irrevocably established in his nature, or is born with him.  Intellectual capacity needs, it is true, to be developed just as many natural products need to be cultivated in order that we may enjoy or use them; but just as in the case of a natural product no cultivation can take the place of original material, neither can it do so in the case of intellect.  That is the reason why qualities which are merely acquired, or learned, or enforced—­that is, qualities a posteriori, whether moral or intellectual—­are not real or genuine, but superficial only, and possessed of no value.  This is a conclusion of true metaphysics, and experience teaches the same lesson to all who can look below the surface.  Nay, it is proved by the great importance which we all attach to such innate characteristics as physiognomy and external appearance, in the case of a man who is at all distinguished; and that is why we are so curious to see him.  Superficial people, to be sure,—­and, for very good reasons, commonplace people too,—­will be of the opposite opinion; for if anything fails them they will thus be enabled to console themselves by thinking that it is still to come.