in the forms of other men. These he will call his friends. That in which he does not recognize himself, he will “whack.”
But most men cannot keep this form of the illusion of individualism. They pass most of their lives in the midst of disappointment. The self cannot get its objects. The ideal independence is hampered. The stubborn world asserts itself against us. We feel the littleness of our powers and of our plans. The broken and despairing self has to seek refuge elsewhere. And so individualism most commonly assumes another shape. In inner self-development we seek what the world refuses us in outer self-realization. Thoughts at least are free. Our emotions are our own. The world does not understand them; but the world is cold and unappreciative. Let us be within ourselves what we cannot get in the outer world. Let us be inwardly complete, even if we are outwardly failures. Then we shall outmt the cruel world, and produce the successful self, in spite of misfortunes.
The reader need not be reminded of what vast development individualism has undergone in this direction. Literature is full of accounts of struggles for inward self-realization, made by men whose outer growth is impeded. The Hamlets and the Fausts of poetry, the saints and the self-conscious martyrs of great religious movements, are familiar examples. We have already in a former chapter studied the outcome of this romantic individualism in a few cases. There is no time to dwell here afresh at any length on so familiar a theme, but for the present we may
