doubt. When one reflects upon the social and ethical problems which have gathered about the word “individualism,” one is reminded that, after all, men bleed and die in this world for the sake of logic as well as for the sake of home and bread, and that the problems of the study are also the problems of human destiny. If one turns from practical life to the questions of theory, one is reminded that, in theology, God is conceived as an individual, and that each man is an individual, and that Christianity has always involved assertions about the individual as such. In natural science, moreover, a vast collection of problems, especially of biological problems, centre about the definition and the constitution of the individuals of the living world. One cannot hesitate, then, as to the significance of our question. It surely deserves a close study.
Strangely enough, however, this problem has been, in its general philosophical aspects, somewhat neglected, especially in the history of modern philosophy. Leibnitz is almost the only modern thinker who has given it a place correspondent to its dignity. The logical, psychological, and metaphysical problems of universality, of law and of truth and knowledge in their more universal aspects, have otherwise received a much more detailed study than has been given to the correlative problems of individuality. In part, however, this very neglect has been meant as a sort of indirect tribute to the significance of the individual. Individuality has been so little subjected to critical scrutiny, because the existence and importance of the individual have been tacitly assumed as
