NO phenomenon of the material world is more interesting or more inscrutable, apart from divine metaphysics, than the persistence of species, the maintenance of individuality. With the summer the familiar blossoms and leafage of each bulb and bush appear, and are greeted as the return of a well-known friend. Growing side by side and feeding upon the same soil, sunshine, and air, they all remain unfailingly true to type, and thus supply that wondrous multiplicity of form and fragrance which makes the garden one's daily delight. If identity were not thus maintained, and the flora with which we are surrounded began to lapse into uniformity, we can understand how prosaic and commonplace everything would speedily seem.
Standing as the highest order of life, the significance of the preservation of our individuality is manifestly of immeasurably greater importance. Upon the present plane of consciousness alikeness usually means deadness to vital ideas, the loss of distinction, of that non-conforming leadership which is essential to progress. Genuine advance in civilization has always been registered by the appearance of men and women who could arouse their fellows from the torpidity of subjection to the commonplace, heroes who disturbed soporific content under the government of traditional beliefs and stimulated the spirit of inquiry and of freedom. The significance of such individuality is seen the moment we think of what would have resulted if there had been no Savonarolas, Cromwells, Garrisons, Gladstones, or Lincolns in the past. This is the more apparent to Christian Scientists in view of their nearness and their conscious obligation to a Leader of this exalted type. The hope of the world has ever been dependent upon great characters, among whom "the Son of man" was incomparably supreme. The significance of all this inheres in the eternal freshness, spontaneity, continuity, and inexhaustibility of Truth which are expressed through man. In so far as one is in touch with the divine, those beauties and integrities of character shine forth which inspire and stimulate unnumbered other men, and thus true progress is initiated and sustained.
Today, however, few persons can have failed to note the existence of a world tendency toward the elimination of distinctive human individuality, and this as the result of influences which are very obvious. Upon the economic plane it is being brought 'about by that elaborate division of labor which has resulted from the invention of machinery. Formerly one workman did practically all that pertained to the making of a watch or a shoe. The work was varied and competitive, the sense of capacity was large, and he was stimulated to that thoughtfulness of application which begets alertness, versatility, self-confidence, and command. Today the average manufacturing workman does some one thing, knows how to do nothing else, and is tempted to become simply a part of a machine. He learns to do his work automatically. He does not have to think or plan, but simply to "keep going" in that interminable round which inevitably conduces either to mental heaviness or to a state of nervous, unavailing protest.
