trying to pattern his life after the lives of other people--
unless, indeed, he be a genuine dolt. But individuality is by no
means the same as genuineness; for individuality may be
associated with the most extreme and even ridiculous
eccentricity, while genuineness we conceive to be always
wholesome, balanced, and touched with dignity. It is a quality
that goes with good sense and self-respect. It is a sort of
robust moral sanity, mixed of elements both moral and
intellectual. It is found in natures too strong to be mere
trimmers and conformers, too well poised and thoughtful to fling
off into intemperate protest and revolt. Laughter is genuine
which has in it neither the shrill, hysterical note of mere
excitement nor the hard, metallic twang of the cynic's sneer--
which rings in the honest voice of gracious good humor, which is
innocent and unsatirical. Speech is genuine which is without
silliness, affectation, or pretense. That character is genuine
which seems built by nature rather than by convention, which is
stuff of independence and of good courage. Nothing spurious,
bastard, begotten out of true wedlock of the mind; nothing
adulterated and seeming to be what it is not; nothing unreal, can
ever get place among the nobility of things genuine, natural, of
pure stock and unmistakable lineage. It is a prerogative of every
truly human being to come out from the low estate of those who
are merely gregarious and of the herd, and show his innate powers
cultivated and yet unspoiled--sound, unmixed, free from
imitation; showing that individualization without extravagance
which is genuineness.

But how? By what means is this self-liberation to be effected--
this emancipation from affection and the bondage of being like