In most men, individual character, that thing which is supposedly so superior to lower animals, comes to very little. They run in schools, join secret orders or churches, vegetate, label themselves in a dull way democrats, republicans, socialists, and strive in all ways to make themselves as like others (those within their immediate ken) as possible. My father, for instance (peace to his spirit!), wished to prepare himself by self-abnegation, prayers and good works here on earth to fit himself for an entirely mythical heaven, to be a standardized angel--wings, harp, robes and all--such as he saw in the “saint pictures” in the various Catholic churches which he attended from time to time. These were the only representations of the future life with which he was familiar, hence he accepted them as true! Indeed as a rule the average or ordinary man (fortunately there is no exact average) cannot think or see beyond his quite immediate environment and binding rules, his neighborhood, his church, what somebody else says or thinks. A plumber wants to be exactly like the next successful plumber he sees; a grocer, the same; an undertaker, the same. Most rich men would like to live in a house like that of all the other rich men they know. Show them the very different house of a rich man in Spain, in Egypt, in India, in Japan--it would never, never do. It is not like that which they know. Their thoughts and desires, like their faces, are those of the species to which they belong. In the main, they are of a trivial, commonplace character, as unimportant as a bean or a pea. Like animals of so limited a mentality as the duck and the penguin, if you know one you know all. You might almost say that they have come to their end spiritually. Nothing can be done for them. Some more vigorous active thing--i. e., the thinking, restless, dissatisfied individual--must come along to rebel and push them aside. If ever the surface of the commonplace is to be disturbed the individual moved by some inherited or bestowed impulse must do it: Luther, Galileo, Keppler, Newton, Columbus.