The notion of indivuality as a heroic severance from the herd came about in 1840

In the 1760s Rousseau redefined individuel from meaning ‘indivisible’, or ‘numerically distinct’, to meaning ‘a single person’, but it was only with the second volume of Tocqueville’s De la démocratie en Amérique in 1840 that individualisme took on the positive connotation of a heroic severance of personality from the herd, and was opposed by negative, greedy égoïsme; both terms were soon shepherded into German.