himself a poor man, with his social position quite gone. Now,
nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing
should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what
is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no
importance.

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true,
beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in
accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that
is all.

It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a
personality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we
never have. Caesar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect
man. But how tragically insecure was Caesar! Wherever there is a
man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
Caesar was very perfect, but his perfection travelled by too
dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius was the perfect man, says Renan.
Yes; the great emperor was a perfect man. But how intolerable were
the endless claims upon him! He staggered under the burden of the
empire. He was conscious how inadequate one man was to bear the
weight of that Titan and too vast orb. What I mean by a perfect
man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not
wounded, or worried or maimed, or in danger. Most personalities
have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been
wasted in friction. Byron's personality, for instance, was
terribly wasted in its battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy,
and Philistinism of the English. Such battles do not always
intensify strength: they often exaggerate weakness. Byron was