say that it lay in the example he set to us all of
how, even in the midst of this intensely worldly social system of ours,
in which each human interest is organized so collectively and so
commercially, a single man may still be a knight-errant of the
intellectual life, and preserve full freedom in the midst of
sociability. Extreme as was his need of friends, and faithful as he
was to them, he yet lived mainly in reliance on his private
inspiration. Asking no man's permission, bowing the knee to no tribal
idol, renouncing the conventional channels of recognition, he showed us
how a life devoted to purely intellectual ends could be beautifully
wholesome outwardly, and overflow with inner contentment. Fortunately
this type of man is recurrent, and from generation to generation,
literary history preserves examples. But it is infrequent enough for
few of us to have known more than one example--I count myself happy in
knowing two and a half! The memory of Davidson will always strengthen
my faith in personal freedom and its spontaneities, and make me less
unqualifiedly respectful than ever of "Civilization," with its herding
and branding, licensing and degree-giving, authorizing and appointing,
and in general regulating and administering by system the lives human
beings. Surely the individual, the person in the singular number, is
the more fundamental phenomenon, and the social institution, of
whatever grade, is but secondary and ministerial. Many as are the
interests which social systems satisfy, always unsatisfied interests
remain over, and among them are interests to which system, as such,
does violence whenever it lays its hand upon us. The best Commonwealth
will always be the one that most cherishes the men who represent the
residual interests, the one that leaves the largest scope to their
peculiarities.

[1] First published in _McClure's Magazine_ for May, 1905.

[2] "The Education of the Wage-Earners." Boston, Ginn & Company, 1904.

VI

HERBERT SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY[1]

"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform." If the
greatest of all his wonders be the human individual, the richness with
which the specimens thereof are diversified, the limitless variety of
outline, from gothic to classic or flowing arabesque, the contradictory
nature of the filling, composed of little and great, of comic, heroic,
and pathetic elements blended inextricably, in personalities all of
whom can _go_