H'lrii Hl.'IIItjf'' I |||:;IPI|-S| FIRST CITY HALL (16$ 8-1697) OF NEW AMSTERDAM AND NEW YORK Redraft by J. Carlson Brevoort from original by Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-80 Litho. by A. Hayward & Co., 1867, at The New-York Historical Society "animated by a sensitive civic conscience, that no other city can quite match.'"1 Yet one might object that this humanitarian spirit, despite its existence, is not so pervasive in New York as to represent uniquely a community point of view. However sincere may be the responsibility of the few for the many, it is the attitudes of the many that set the quality of a city. And if there is a spirit of New York apart from the attitudes of its component eight million, it is manifested rather in an acceptance of, than in a concern for, the individual. Thus the reconciliation of individuality with community perhaps suggests best the corporate point of view. Walt Whitman appeared to sense this when he wrote in 1878 that "the current humanity of New York gives the directest proof yet of... the solution of that paradox, the eligibility [that 81 Nevins, "The Golden Thread 15-16. 422