Editorial January 15, 1921 Issue

Individuality

Frederick Dixon

There is probably nothing against which the ordinary man fights more determinedly than any effort to rob him of what he terms his individuality. The reason for this is a much deeper one than he is conscious of. It lies in the fact that individuality is spiritual and indestructible, instead of being a merely material condition at the mercy of those forces which claim power to destroy the human being. As a consequence of the fact that it is impossible to hide the truth about anything, every person is conscious of an individuality which it is entirely beyond him to explain, and of which all the world's philosophies have never been able to offer an explanation. What the true explanation is Christ Jesus made perfectly clear, when, again and again, he drew the distinction between the real man and his material counterfeit. As, for instance, when he told Nicodemus that that which was born of the flesh was flesh, and that that which was born of the Spirit was spirit, or when he explained to the Pharisees that they were of their father the devil, evil, and that this evil had no place in the truth of spiritual reality.

Jesus, of course, went further than this in his explanations. He may, indeed, be said to have been always covering this particular ground in his teaching. Just as he explained to the Pharisees that the human being was of his father the devil, so he repeatedly explained to those with ears to hear that their Father was in heaven, that their Father was Spirit and not matter, and that it was consequently the duty of every one who was endeavoring to be his disciple to strive to be perfect even as his Father which was in heaven was perfect. What Jesus meant in this teaching, Mrs. Eddy has made clear to humanity in her teaching of Christian Science. A human being, she has explained, is the counterfeit of his spiritual reality, and consequently when this is learned a man comprehends how the loss of his materiality, so far from causing the destruction of his individuality, merely demonstrates the eternity of that individuality. "Spirit," she writes, on page 513 of Science and Health, "diversifies, classifies, and individualizes all thoughts, which are as eternal as the Mind conceiving them; but the intelligence, existence, and continuity of all individuality remain in God, who is the divinely creative Principle thereof."

So far, then, from any person imagining that he can lose his individuality by losing his materiality, the exact reverse is the truth, as Jesus explained when he declared that he who would lose his life, that is his soul or materiality, "for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." It is, therefore, a spiritual instinct, whether the individual is conscious of it or not, which causes him to fight for his individuality, and to struggle against every effort to suppress this individuality. The curious thing is that people do not perceive that it is the effort of autocracy, in some shape, to impress itself on the world, which constitutes the attempt to rob them of their individuality, and not the effort of Truth in exposing the unreality of matter, and so acquainting them with their spiritual reality. Thus it is the true instinct to resist mental domination of every sort which has incited the effort of the individual to preserve his individuality, and has made him struggle, no matter at what seeming cost to himself, for that freedom of thought which is necessary to his spiritual advancement. It is always the materialist who submits.

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