“Proximus huic, longo sed proximus intervallo,”—­

  “next with an exceeding wide remove.”

Take from Epaminondas or Luther all that makes him man, and the rest will not be worth selling to the Jews.  Individuality is an accompaniment, an accessory, a red line on the map, a fence about the field, a copyright on the book.  It is like the particular flavors of fruits,—­of no account but in relation to their saccharine, acid, and other staple elements.  It must therefore keep its place, or become an impertinence.  If it grow forward, officious, and begin to push in between the pure nature and its divine ends, at once it is a meddling Peter, for whom there is no due greeting but “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.