glyph 635: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass ... Peter Saint-Andre, Ayn Rand, James C. Bennett, Alan Macfarlane, Kevin Phillips, Alexandre Tocqueville, Claudio Véliz, D.H. Fischer, J.C.D Clark, Isaiah Berlin ... fox and hedgehog . four cultures of North America, origins of English individualism ... Aristotle, Odysseus ... Peter Saint-Andre's essay, from which this quotation is taken, is appended by small list of books essential to the understanding of freeorder

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

For genius must realize that, precious as it may be, there is something far more precious, namely, simple Identity, One's-self. A man is not greatest as victor in war, nor inventor or explorer, nor even in science, or in his intellectual or artistic capacity, or exemplar in some vast benevolence. To the highest Democratic view, man is most acceptable in living well the practical life and lot which happens to him as ordinary farmer, sea-farer, mechanic, clerk, laborer, or driver -- upon and from which position as a central basis or pedestal, while performing its labors, and his duties as citizen, son, husband, father and employed person, he preserves his physique, ascends, developing, radiating himself in other regions -- and especially where and when, (greatest of all, and nobler than the proudest mere genius or magnate in any field) he fully realizes the Conscience, the Spiritual, the divine faculty, cultivated well, exemplified in all his deeds and words, through life, uncompromising to the end -- a flight loftier than any of Homer's or Shakspere's -- broader than all poems and bibles -- namely, Nature's own, and in the midst of it, Yourself, your own Identity, body and soul. (All serves, helps -- but in the centre of all, absorbing all, giving, for your purpose, the only meaning and vitality to all, master or mistress of all, under the law, stands Yourself.

Quoted by Peter Saint-Andre in "Ayn Rand and American Culture", First published as Cultural Notes No. 52 by the Libertarian Alliance (June 2004)
https://stpeter.im/writings/rand/america.html

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August 9, 2022