The American Democrat/On Individuality
ON INDIVIDUALITY.
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
It is a curious circumstance, that, in endeavouring to secure the popular rights, an effect has been produced in this country totally opposed to this main object. Men have been so long accustomed to see oppression exercised in the name of one, or in the name of a few, that they have got to consider the sway of numbers as the only criterion of freedom. Numbers, however, may oppress as well as one or a few, and when such oppression occurs, it is usually of the worst character.
The habit of seeing the publick rule, is gradually accustoming the American mind to an interference with private rights that is slowly undermining the individuality of the national character. There is getting to be so much publick right, that private right is overshadowed and lost. A danger exists that the ends of liberty will be forgotten altogether in the means.
All greatness of character is dependant on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity. In time, such a state of things would annihilate invention and paralyze genius. A nation would become a nation of common place labourers.
The pursuit of happiness is inseparable from the claims of individuality. To compel all to follow this object in the same manner, is to oppress all above the average tastes and information. It can only be done at the expense of that which is the aim of liberty.
An entire distinct individuality, in the social state, is neither possible nor desirable. Our happiness is so connected with the social and family ties as to prevent it; but, if it be possible to render ourselves miserable by aspiring to an independence that nature forbids, it is also possible to be made unhappy by a too obtrusive interference with our individuality.
Of all Christian countries, individuality, as connected with habits, is perhaps the most encouraged in England; and of all Christian countries this is the one, perhaps, in which there is the least individuality of the same nature. The latter fact would be extraordinary, could it not be referred to the religious discipline that so much influenced the colonists, and which in a measure supplied the place of law. In communities in which private acts became the subject of publick parochial investigation, it followed as a natural consequence, that men lived under the constant corrective of publick opinion, however narrow, provincial, or prejudiced. This feature of the American character, therefore, is to be ascribed, in part, to the fanaticism of our ancestors, and, in part, to the natural tendency in democracies to mistake and augment the authority of the publick.