Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates
family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property,
marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the
programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts
the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help
the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman
more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He
rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and
community in a very marked form. ‘Who is my mother? Who are my
brothers?’ he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him.
When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, ‘Let the
dead bury the dead,’ was his terrible answer. He would allow no claim
whatsoever to be made on personality.
And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and
absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science;
or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor;
or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like
Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his
net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises
the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation in morals
and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present
day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders.
He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. Father Damien
was Christlike when he went out to live with the lepers, because in such
service he realised fully what was best in him. But he was not more
Christlike than Wagner when he realised his soul in music; or than
Shelley, when he realised his soul in song. There is no one type for
man. There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And
while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the
claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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