wolf
makes any distinction between a kid and a lamb; both appear t o the
wolf as the same identical quarry, alike easy to pounce upon, alike
good to devour. We, for our part, make a distinction between a goat and
a sheep; but can we tell one goat from another, one sheep from another?
The INDIVIDUALITY of things or of beings escapes us, unless it is
materially to our advantage to perceive it. Even when we do take note
of it--as when we distinguish one man from another--it is not the
individuality itself that the eye grasps, i.e., an entirely original
harmony of forms and colours, but only one or two features that will
make practical recognition easier.

In short, we do not see the actual things themselves; in most cases we
confine ourselves to reading the labels affixed to them. This tendency,
the result of need, has become even more pronounced under the influence
of speech; for words--with the exception of proper nouns--all denote
genera. The word, which only takes note of the most ordinary function
and commonplace aspect of the thing, intervenes between it and
ourselves, and would conceal its form from our eyes, were that form not
already masked beneath the necessities that brought the word into
existence. Not only external objects, but even our own mental states,
are screened from us in their inmost, their personal aspect, in the
original life they possess. When we feel love or hatred, when we are
gay or sad, is it really the feeling itself that reaches our
consciousness with those innumerable fleeting shades of meaning and
deep resounding echoes that make it something altogether our own? We
should all, were it so, be novelists or poets or musicians. Mostly,
however, we perceive nothing but the outward display of our mental
state. We catch only the impersonal aspect of our feelings, that aspect
which speech has set down once for all because it is almost the same,
in the same conditions, for all men. Thus, even in our own individual,
individuality escapes our ken. We move amidst generalities and symbols,
as within a tilt-yard in which our force is effectively pitted against
other forces; and fascinated by action, tempted by it, for our own
good, on to the field it has selected, we live in a zone midway between
things and ourselves, externally to things, externally also to
ourselves. From time to time, however, in a fit of absentmindedness,
nature raises up souls that are more detached from life. Not with that
intentio