Individuality. 165 



The meaning of this apparent contradiction is 

 clear; through countless imperfect individual forms 

 does life pass, ruthlessly crushing the too imper- 

 fect, ruthlessly chastening the multitude, to attain 

 finally a more perfect individual life. 



Meantime, all through life, from lowest to high- 

 est, the struggle of individual against race goes on, 

 always to the defeat of the individual. Half blessed 

 by a partial knowledge of the joy of life, the full 

 knowledge is concealed in the future, and it is to 

 the final revelation of this that life, aspiring, baffled, 

 still struggles upward. 



Nowhere is the struggle between individual and 

 race more severe than in the reproductive life. 



To attain race ends the reproductive faculty is, 

 as Emerson expresses it, vastly " overloaded,'' par- 

 ticularly in the highest of all life, where the accom- 

 plishment of race ends is most important. 



For this highest life all life has in one sense 

 existed ; through the upward struggle of multitudi- 

 nous lower forms human life has emerged, weighted 

 with many fragments of unsloughcd imperfections, 

 blessed with a great cumulative torrent of upward- 

 tending desire. 



Partly, perhaps, because man remembered past 

 pleasures and desired a repetition, even when no 

 physiological necessity impelled him, and partly 

 through ignorance of the laws of life and happiness, 

 which cannot be violated without full payment of 

 heavy penalty, he has precipitated upon his race 



