conform. The man does not become
an individual merely by obeying the written and unwritten laws. He
becomes an individual because the desire to make money releases his
energy and intensifies his personal initiative. The kind of individuals
created by such an economic system are not distinguished one from
another by any special purpose. They are distinguished by the energy and
success whereby the common purpose of making money is accompanied and
followed. Some men show more enterprise and ingenuity in devising ways
of making money than others, or they show more vigor and zeal in taking
advantage of the ordinary methods. These men are the kind of individuals
which the existing economic system tends to encourage; and critics of
the existing system are denounced, because of the disastrous effect upon
individual initiative which would result from restricting individual
economic freedom.

But why should a man become an individual because he does what everybody
else does, only with more energy and success? The individuality so
acquired is merely that of one particle in a mass of similar particles.
Some particles are bigger than others and livelier; but from a
sufficient distance they all look alike; and in substance and meaning
they all are alike. Their individual activity and history do not make
them less alike. It merely makes them bigger or smaller, livelier or
more inert. Their distinction from their fellows is quantitative; the
unity of their various phases a matter of repetition; their independence
wholly comparative. Such men are associated with their fellows in the
pursuit of a common purpose, and they are divided from their fellows by
the energy and success with which that purpose is pursued. On the other
hand, a condition favorable to genuine individuality would be one in
which men were divided from one another by special purposes, and
reunited in so far as these individual purposes were excellently and
successfully achieved.

The truth is that individuality cannot be dissociated from the pursuit
of a disinterested object. It is a moral and intellectual quality, and
it must be realized by moral and intellectual means. A man achieves
individual distinction, not by the enterprise and vigor with which he
accumulates money, but by the zeal and the skill with which he pursues
an exclusive interest--an interest usually, but not necessarily,
connected with his means of livelihood. The purpose to which he is
devoted--such,