 For his inspiration Norton turned chiefly to the Greeks, and especially to the dialogues of Plato.He called himself an ethical individualist, seeing a harmony between the individual's fidelity to his own "personal destiny" and the fulfillment of society's collective needs.He held that within each person is an innate potentiality (his "daimon," or soul), and that each person's life task is to discover it and actualize it.