It is in the four attributes here emphasised that the true nature of mind
in its underivability and superiority to all nature first becomes clear.
All that we have so far considered under the name of mind is only
preliminary and leads up to this. All reality of external things is of
little account compared with that of the mind. It does not occur to any
one in practice to regard anything in the whole world as more real and
genuine than his own love and hate, fear and hope, his pain, from the
simplest discomfort due to a wound to the pangs of conscience and the
gnawings of remorse—his pleasure, from the merest comfort to the highest
raptures of delight. This world of feeling is for us the meaning of all
existence. The more we plunge ourselves into it, the deeper are the
intricacies and mysteries it reveals. At every point underivable and
unintelligible in terms of physiological processes, it reveals itself from
stage to stage as more deeply and wholly unique in its relations,
interactions, and processes, and grows farther and farther beyond the
laboured and insufficient schemes and formulas under which science desires
to range all psychical phenomena.
Individuality.
It is especially in “feeling” that what we call individuality has its
roots. The individual really means the “indivisible,” and in the strict
sense of the word need mean nothing more than the ego, and the unity of
consciousness of which we have already spoken. But through a change in the
meaning of the word we have come to mean much more than that by it. This
individuality forces itself most distinctly upon our attention in regard
to prominent and distinguished persons. It is the particular determination
of their psychical nature that marks them out so distinctly, and it often
rather escapes analysis and characterisation than is attained by it.
“Individuum est ineffabile.” It can only be grasped intuitively and by
experience. And people of a non-reflective mood are usually more
successful in understanding it than those who reflect and analyse. It
requires “fine feeling,” which knows exactly how it stands towards the
person in question, which yet can seldom give any definite account of his
characteristics. Individuality usually meets us most obviously in
exceptional men, and we are apt to contrast these with ordinary men. But
on closer examination we see that this difference is only one of degree.
“Individuality” in a less marked manner belongs to them all, and where it
exists it is a distinctly original thing, which cannot be derived from its
antecedents. No psyche is simply derivable from other psyches. What a
child receives from its parents by “heredity” are factors which, taken
together, amount to more than the mere sum of them. The synthesis of these
is at once the creation of something new and peculiar, and what has been
handed down is merely the building material. This can be felt in an
intensified and striking degree in regard to “pronounced individuality,”
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