Rembrandt paints all in a shadow, and Claude Lorraine in sunny
light. Petrarch frames with cunning skill his chiming sonnets,
and Dante portrays with majestic hand, that makes the page
almost tingle with fire, his vision of the future. Shakespeare,
with a well-nigh prescient intelligence, interprets the secrets
of history and of life, and reads the courses of the future in
the past, and Milton rolls, from beneath the great arches of
his religious and cathedral-like soul, its sublime oratorios.
And the copiousness of experience, the variety, affluence,
multiformity of life, as it exists upon earth and arrests our
attention, is derived altogether, in the ultimate analysis, from
this personal constitution of each individual.--RICHARD S.
STORRS.
(1586)
* * * * *
Jesus said of the Good Shepherd, “He calleth his own sheep by name.”
We have each his own personal marks, and are never lost in the mass of
humanity.
An inspector of police and, in general, every person unfamiliar
with the application of the “verbal portrait,” tho possessing
the photograph of an individual, will pass by that individual
without recognition, if the photograph is a few years old or
if the general appearance has been altered by a gain or loss
of flesh, or by a change in the beard or the hair or even the
clothes. On the other hand, descriptive identification, which
means an accurate description of the immovable parts of the face
(forehead, nose, ears, etc.), enables those who are sufficiently
familiar with the method to identify a person with certainty,
not only with the aid of a photograph, but also simply by means
of a printed description of those characteristics of the person
in question which are out of the ordinary. (Text.)--L.
RAMAKERS, _The Scientific American_.
(1587)
* * * * *
No rainbow that paints its arch upon the cloud, no river that
courses like liquid silver through emerald banks, no sunset
that opens its deeps of splendor, with domes of sapphire and
pinnacles of chrysolite, hath any such beauty to him who
surveys it as the poem or discourse which speaks the peace, or
the triumphing hope, of another human soul. For forever is it
true that the life in each stands apart from the life in every
other. It hath its center, tho not its cause, within itself; is
full-orbed in each; commingled with that of no other being; as
separate in each, and as purely individual, as if there were no
other besides it in existence!--RICHARD S. STORRS.
(1588)
* * * * *
Students of social phenomena must allow for the personal equation. Men
are certainly as individual as birds:
Every bird sings his own song; no two sing exactly alike, ...
the song of every singer is unique. There are, of course,
similarities in the songs of birds of the same species.... For
lack of intimate acquaintance with the music of a particular
bird, we think he sings just like the next one. Why! do all
roosters have the same crow? No; any farmer knows better than
this.... Every individual sings his own song.
(1589)
See ORIGINALITY; PERSONAL ELEMENT.