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 Secret of personality; the problem of ma 
 
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 3 1924 029 345 455 
 
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THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
By GEORG E TRUMB ULL LADD 
 
 WHAT CAN I KNOW ? 
 
 An Inquiry into Truth, its Nature, the Means 
 of its Attainment, and its Relations to the Practi- 
 cal Life. Crown 8vo. pp. viii-311. 
 
 WHAT OUGHT I TO DO ? 
 
 An Inquiry into the Nature and Kinds of Virtue 
 and into the Sanctions, Aims, and Values of the 
 Moral Life. Crown 8vo. pp. x-311. 
 
 WHAT SHOULD I BELIEVE? 
 
 An Inquiry into the Nature, Grounds, and 
 Value of the Faiths of Science, Society, Morals, 
 and Rehgion. Crown 8vo. pp. xvi-275. 
 
 WHAT MAY I HOPE ? 
 
 An Inquiry into the Sources and Reasonableness 
 of The Hopes of Humanity, especially the Social 
 and Religioiis. Crown Svo. pp. xvi-310. 
 
 THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The Problem of Man's Personal Life as Viewed 
 in the Light of an Hypothesis of Man's Religious 
 Faith. Crown Svo. pp. x-287. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
THE 
 
 SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF MAN'S 
 
 PERSONAL LIFE AS VIEWED IN 
 
 THE LIGHT OF AN HYPOTHESIS OF 
 
 MAN'S RELIGIOUS FAITH 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD, LL.D. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 1918 
 
COPYRIGHT, igl8 
 BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
TO THOSE WHO AT PRESENT 
 
 LAMENT THE APPAIXING WASTE OF 
 
 PERSONAL VALUES 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 IS IN SYMPATHY DEDICATED 
 
PREFACE 
 
 'HERE are no more profound and 
 difficxilt problems than those which 
 concern the personal life of man. 
 Indeed, it might successfully be argued that all 
 other problems are in some sort largely included 
 in the answers given to these problems. This is 
 not true alone from the theoretical point of view, 
 as affecting our conclusions touching all the 
 fundamental issues of philosophy, religion, and 
 the positive sciences. It is pre-eminently true 
 as touching all the practical issues of life. What 
 shall I think of myself, my origin, the meaning 
 of my life, the values which it seeks to realize, 
 and my destiny; — these are inquiries, than 
 which no other lie so near to the vital interests 
 of every man. 
 
 And surely, at no other time in human history 
 has the pressure of the inquiry into the secret 
 of human personal life and the measurement of 
 its fundamental and eternal values — if indeed 
 it has any such — been more insistent and 
 spiritually disturbing. All the advances of mod- 
 ern science and art, and all the recent increases 
 in the material prosperity of the human race, as 
 well as all the tenets of morality and religion, 
 
 [vii] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 seemed only a short time ago to be enhancing the 
 values, while deepening the mystery, of the per- 
 sonal life of the race and of the individual man. 
 And yet, in the light of the most recent events, 
 how awfully cheap does human life seem to 
 have become; and how fatefully ruthless its 
 destruction! 
 
 The discussion of this great problem, as at- 
 tempted by this little book, makes no claim for 
 itself of an indisputable scientific certainty, or 
 even of an effort to arrive at such certainty. 
 It offers itself, the rather, as an earnest of those 
 faiths of religion in which, as it seems to the 
 author, a suggestion that gives to the intellect 
 some light and to the heart much comfort may 
 be found. That the suggestion is not contrary to, 
 but is in conformity with, the truths of science 
 and philosophy, as they bear most directly on 
 this problem, the author firmly believes. 
 
 George Trumbull Ladd 
 
 [viii] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAOK 
 
 I. What Is It to Be a Person? The Evidence 
 
 OF Fact 1 
 
 n. What Is It to Be a Peeson? The Witness 
 
 OF Words 21 
 
 m. The Centre of Pehsonalitt 39 
 
 IV. Coming to One's Self 62 
 
 V. The Development of Personality 88 
 
 VI. The Person as Rational 115 
 
 Vn. The Person as Moral 145 
 
 Vin. The Person as a Lover of Beauty .... 177 
 
 IX. The Person as Religious 196 
 
 X. The Person as Religious (Continiied) . . . 222 
 
 XI. The Goal of Personal Life 246 
 
 Xn. Faith as an Hypothesis 271 
 
 Index . . " 283 
 
 [ix] 
 
"Intellect relies on Reason, Faith on Authority; 
 opinion defends itself by probability alone. These two 
 comprehend the sure truth ; but faith, in closed and in- 
 voluted, intelligence, in exposed and manifest form." 
 
 Beenahd. 
 
 " What tho' the destined goal seem faint and far f 
 The patience and the toil are not in vain. 
 What thou hast given in love, thou shalt regain 
 If not on earth, on some diviner star." 
 
THE 
 SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT IS IT TO BE A PERSON? 
 THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 "^ VER since man began to reflect, his 
 =<^ thoughts, cares, and practical activi- 
 Jk_^ ties have centred around, and grown 
 out from, his conception of himself, in ways 
 quite different from those of the lower animals. 
 His entire life has been arranged and, however 
 dimly, recognized as having much to do with a 
 welfare other than the merely physical. Even 
 his more fundamental instincts, his so-called 
 "natural" strivings for an improved existence, 
 his most spontaneous impulses, have been con- 
 cerned with the invisible, the distant future, the 
 spiritual forces in his environment, if we may 
 use these words in their more sensuous and al- 
 most semi-materialistic meaning. His appetites, 
 including especially those of food, drink, and sex, 
 and his acquisitive propensities, have always had 
 for him something more than their most obvious 
 significance, something different from and higher 
 than their temporary value. His ideas of his 
 own origin, nature, development, and destiny, 
 
 [1] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 have progressively formed themselves after im- 
 proved types, which could not be conjectured or 
 inferred from the concrete examples afforded by 
 the behavior of things; but which, the rather, 
 were bestowed upon things — inorganic and 
 organic, having some form of consciousness or 
 wholly devoid of any trace of conscious activi- 
 ties, as modem science might say — by a process 
 of personifying. He has insisted upon putting 
 his Self into all of them. 
 
 These contentions could be amply illustrated 
 by an extended appeal to anthropology and 
 psychology. To make this appeal in a way to 
 justify a scientific induction would require many 
 volumes. We must content ourselves with illus- 
 trating it in a very partial way. And let us 
 begin with that class of the emotions in which 
 man, perhaps more closely than in any others, 
 resembles the lower animals; is indeed himself 
 largely an animal. I refer to the emotions of 
 fear. As in the case of all! the animals, the 
 presence through generations of the species of 
 natural forces and living things hostile to life and 
 welfare and happiness, begets and nourishes in 
 man certain emotions of fear. Like the birds, he 
 recoils timidly at the presage of oncoming storms; 
 like the rat he shrinks from the poisonous snake; 
 like the hind, he inclines to run at the growl of 
 the bear, the roar of the Hon, the bark of the 
 wolf. K he fights, he must fight like a man, 
 with a man's courage and craft. But man's 
 
 [2] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 fears are human fears. They are not by any 
 means wholly after the analogy of animal fears; 
 and of these the most haunting and distressing 
 arise from his superstitions, which are themselves 
 the outgrowth of human imagination working in 
 the fields of moral and religious consciousness. 
 The objects to which they attach themselves are 
 the results of man's objectifying his own per- 
 sonality. They are outputs of his own personal 
 traits, embodied in some event, some animal, 
 some tree; or cast naked into the sky, the dark- 
 ness of the cave or of the midnight air. It is 
 this kind of fear which throws into convulsions 
 the Samoyeds when a sudden and unaccountable 
 blow is struck upon the tent within which they 
 are seated. It is the same kind of fear which 
 compels the natives of Northern India to worship 
 the BhMs, or malignant spirits which have ema- 
 nated from men who have died a violent death; 
 and makes the Ceylonese strive by magic and 
 bloody sacrifices to propitiate or overcome the 
 endless variety of harmful deities which infest 
 the fields in which they work, the groves in 
 which they rest, the homes in which they eat 
 and sleep. In improved form it expresses itself 
 in the GUgamesh epic : 
 
 " I came to a glen at night. 
 Lions I saw and was afraid, 
 I raised my head and prayed to Sin." 
 
 With the development and uplifting of personal 
 life this fear becomes that reverence for Divine 
 
 [3] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Being which is the beginning of all wisdom, or 
 ultimately gives place to the love which banishes 
 all fear. But whatever form the emotion takes, 
 and whatever the goal in which it terminates, 
 the emotion itself retains the characteristics de- 
 rived from man's personal life. 
 
 If we may use for convenience' sake a term 
 which a sound authority has called a "pure 
 fiction, however convenient a fiction it may be," 
 we will say that the appetites even of "primi- 
 tive man" are seldom or never indulged in a 
 merely animal way. When he drinks, whether 
 it be in private or with others, he thinks it not a 
 waste of good material to pour out a cup in 
 libation to the god; or if, as is more likely, it is 
 an occasion of social and ceremonial feasting, he 
 invites invisible beings to share the feast with 
 him, or saves the bits for them, if only they will 
 refrain from doing harm in recognition of this 
 consideration; for they are persons with appe- 
 tites and passions like himself. He even personi- 
 fies the intoxicating cup and imagines Indra 
 drinking its sweet juice; and so he originates the 
 cult of Soma, in which gods and men get drunk 
 together. Or, in more truly pious and humble 
 way, in the peasant's home the salted cake or 
 bowl of gruel is left to be enjoyed by the ghostly 
 or the ancestral spirit of a nightly visitor. All 
 this is indeed far enough from primitive man, 
 strictly so named; but as nearly as we can get 
 back or down to him, we find in essentially the 
 
 [4] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 same meaning more gross and crude forms of 
 the same elementary fondness, — or shall we not 
 say, necessity, for proclaiming himself a person 
 surrounded by an invisible personal environment, 
 even in the gratification of his appetites. His 
 eating and drinking has a reference possible 
 beyond itself. When carried to excesses, and 
 even to orgies, it may mean something more 
 than animal gluttony or drunkenness. 
 
 Still more significant of personality is in man's 
 case the mating of the sexes. The human male 
 may fight for his mate, capture and carry her off 
 by force, and wreak his lust upon her, as a veri- 
 table brute may do. The human female may 
 captivate, embrace, and then sting to death her 
 mate, as the Mexican tarantula is said to do. 
 But this purely lustful behavior is not the normal 
 way for human beings to mate; nor does it com- 
 prise all of the essentials to human mating as 
 they are embodied in the ceremonials of even 
 savage and primitive man. Some kind of obli- 
 gations to personal fidelity and mutual co-opera- 
 tion is customarily included in the forming and 
 carrying out of the marriage relation. The man 
 ought to hunt and fish, and if need be risk his life 
 at it, in support and defence of his woman and 
 their offspring; and the woman ought to cook, or 
 perhaps work in the fields, bear and care for the 
 offspring. It does not matter how unjust the 
 arrangement may seem to be from our modern 
 point of view. What does matter from our 
 
 [5] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 present point of view is the fact that there is 
 understood to be some arrangement; and that 
 this arrangement is either implied or proclaimed 
 in some ceremonial manner. _ Our inquiry is not, 
 whether that uniformly or generally is which 
 ought- to-be: our inquiry concerns the meaning 
 of the fact that some idea of something which 
 ought-to-be, enters into the matter. For nothing 
 of ceremonial, or the obligatory, can come into 
 existence, in thought or word or deed, which does 
 not derive from man's personality. Even the 
 sexual relation itseH is widely personified so as 
 not only to apply to the gods themselves, but also 
 to create divine beings who are the especial 
 exciters, patrons, or guardians of the sexual 
 relation. We scarcely need mention in this 
 connection Astarte among the Phoenicians, 
 Aphrodite among the Greeks, Venus among the 
 Latin races; or the worship of the phallus and 
 the lingam in India and the Old Japan, and 
 ceremonial prostitution or promiscuous inter- 
 course in the temples of the classic periods of 
 Europe and the Orient, as well as among the 
 islanders of the South Seas. 
 
 It would be absurd to suppose that the more 
 patent facts of generation, growth in the womb, 
 and birth of offspring, have not been observed 
 and understood in their physical significance by 
 the most unreflective intellects among the adults 
 of the human race. But these facts, and the 
 understanding of them, have never sufficed to 
 
 [6] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 explain the mystery of the origin of human 
 existence. In all time, something beyond these 
 obvious physical facts has seemed to be needed 
 in order to lift the veil that shrouds the origin 
 of man's personal life. But the question, 
 "Whence have I and my ancestors come?" has 
 not been put to physiological science; neither 
 has its answer been considered as satisfactory, or 
 even wholly to the point, when given in terms of 
 this science. There has always been the invin- 
 cible belief, or the naive suspicion, that imper- 
 sonal forces alone could not altogether account 
 for the manufacture of a person. In other words : 
 Man is not a merely natural being. Invisible 
 agencies of a personal sort must be assumed to 
 have taken part in the generation and endowment 
 with personal attributes of the human race. 
 Heroes are sons of the gods. At some time in 
 the past, if not in the instances of every child of 
 today, the myth of Genesis, the book of Origins, 
 has been true in fact: "The sons of God saw the 
 daughters of men that they were fair; and they 
 took them wives of all that they chose." As 
 said W. Robertson Smith in his "The Religion of 
 the Semites" (p. 30): "A man was born into 
 a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was 
 born into relation to his fellow men." 
 
 In not a few cases, in his groping after an 
 account of the origin of his own life and that of 
 his ancestors, man has found the answer to his 
 problem by personifying some form of animal 
 
 [7] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 life. Hence there are individual totems, and 
 family totems, and totems of the clan or tribe. 
 Animals of superior strength, cunning, swiftness, 
 or deadly powers, have been invoked to explain 
 the awful mystery. These "other-selves" have 
 been made "Over-Selves." And when this proc- 
 ess of personifying and deifying has gone on 
 for centuries, no development of philosophy, 
 science, or art succeeds easily in casting its super- 
 stitious products out of the human imagination. 
 Thus we have in India today, side by side with 
 the most transcendental philosophy and a subtle 
 psychology, a frightful jumble, a motley mix- 
 ture, of personified beings, all concerned in the 
 begetting and conservation or destruction of man. 
 As Sir Monier Williams has said: "It is difficult 
 for any believer in Hinduism to draw a line of 
 demarcation between gods, man, and animals." 
 All are intermingled in a whirlpool of personal 
 life flowing from a personified Universe as its 
 inexhaustible source. 
 
 In the supply of his daily wants man also 
 shows himself a person, and so insists on imagin- 
 ing that he stands in personal relations with a 
 personified Nature. Even primitive man does 
 not fish as does the cormorant, or hunt as does 
 the wolf. And it is not the manner of his craft 
 which constitutes the striking difference. Be- 
 sides the alleged superiority of his intellectual 
 resources, the more important thing for our 
 present contention is that his attitude toward 
 
 [8] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 his task, and its success or failure, is quite unlike 
 that of any of the lower animals. His sense of 
 dependence and helplessness, and his hopes of 
 relief, go out toward invisible personal agencies 
 who are of like conscious wants and ways of 
 planning with himself. Thus, men who live by 
 hunting have their special kinds of gods; and 
 fishermen employ kinds of prayer suitable to 
 their craft. Success in these occupations is due 
 to divine favor; lack of success is attributed to 
 the divine displeasure. When, at a later stage 
 of his economical development, he turns to 
 agriculture, it is Osiris, than whom the Egyptian 
 pantheon knew no god more good and great and 
 worthy of divine honor, who shows men how to 
 water and till the fields, and who rewards their 
 labors with plenty. In China it is the Heaven- 
 descended Emperor who invokes the favor of his 
 ancestor Heaven, to grant its blessing upon the 
 agriculture of the nation. Nor must we fail just 
 to mention the influence of the same process of 
 personifying in establishing and fostering the 
 earlier institutions and orders devoted to the 
 different kinds of handicraft and trade. All of 
 them were inclined at their origin to ascribe them- 
 selves to invisible divine personalities as their 
 founders and patrons. "In the course of time," 
 says Jastrow of the Babylonians, "all the great 
 temples in the large centres became large finan- 
 cial establishments." 
 
 It is customary to suppose that the develop- 
 
 [9] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 ment of the various kinds of science in their 
 bearing upon all forms of human industry and 
 practical endeavor have by right, if not in real- 
 ity, banished from the field of rational thinking, 
 along lines of actual causal relations, all these 
 superstitions which were formerly created by 
 the busy but easily beguiled imagination of man. 
 But th^ most pious, and not necessarily less 
 intelligent portion of mankind still continue to 
 believe that some Divine Being gives "seed to 
 the sower and bread to the eater." And do not 
 nations, even those which boast most bravely of 
 their scientific attainments and practical effi- 
 ciency, pray for food and prosperity in trade 
 and business and war, when they are in need, and 
 give thanks when their need is supplied? We 
 are not now concerned with the hypocrisy or 
 practical value of all this, but with the deeper 
 import of the fact that it is so; inasmuch as this 
 fact seems to us to throw some light on the prob- 
 lem, "What is it to be a person?" and upon the 
 persistency of human nature in its cunning trick 
 of personifying in behalf of the better under- 
 standing of all its many-sided experiences. 
 
 In passing we call attention to the grotesque 
 fact that those who have avowedly passed beyond 
 the limits of every trace of these and similar 
 superstitions, are no less prompt and vociferous 
 than others in cursing their luck when it goes 
 against them, and in "patting it on the back," 
 so to say, when it turns up in their favor. As 
 
 [10] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 though, indeed, the wholly Impersonal could be 
 fit object for either cursing or commending. 
 
 There are, however, other and more subtile 
 and profound differences which characterize man 
 as a person, and, being a person, a creature not 
 wholly to be understood or explained after the 
 analogue of any animal. One of the most star- 
 tling of these distinctions appertains to his own 
 beliefs as to the way he receives his knowledge, 
 and the nature and extent of its application, 
 however received. Both anthropology and com- 
 parative religion assure us of the wide-spreading, 
 if not altogether primitive and universal belief of 
 man that he receives part of his knowledge — 
 and this the most important and mysterious 
 part — from some other source than his own 
 reflections. Invisible divine beings, personifica- 
 tions of himself, are engaged in teaching him 
 about the significance of present events, the things 
 they portend in the future; and even the pro- 
 founder truths about his own origin, duty, and 
 destiny. Indeed, he often inclines to dream, if 
 not dogmatically assert, that much of the most 
 certain of his knowledge comes in this super- 
 human but not supernatural way. For it is in 
 his thought the most "natural" thing in the 
 world that the over-beings and under-beings 
 whom his imagination, taking up this task of 
 personifying in the interests of explanation, 
 should, if favorable to him, lead him into 
 truth; but, if hostile, why, then, of course, lead 
 
 [11] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 him astray. Hence oracles, inspired wise men 
 and women who have uncanny powers, due to 
 their possession of coveted secret mysteries, 
 ancestral warnings, vague or clearer messages 
 through the lips of diviners from those who are 
 dead, and signs and omens innumerable, all of 
 which, if they have not in themselves knowledge, 
 or suggestions of knowledge, are at least intima- 
 tions of truths not derivable from the unaided 
 intellectual activities of living men. 
 
 As these facts are themselves subjected to 
 further reflection they give rise to different 
 theories as to the origin and nature of the "ra- 
 tionality" so distinctive of human personal life 
 and its development. Man is an animal; but he 
 is something more. He is a "person," a rational 
 animal. He has beliefs and principles of cogni- 
 tion, which are distinctive of his selfhood, but 
 which are not wholly self -acquired. Out of this 
 fact, religion constructs its theories of revelation 
 and inspiration. Philosophy analyzes the mental 
 operations and discovers elements which it calls 
 by any one of fully two-score of different equally 
 mystical terms, — such as intuitions, naturae 
 judicia, semina omnium cognitionum, seminge 
 seternitatis, zopyra (living sparks), categories of 
 thought, innate cognitions, transcendental truths, 
 innate or a -priori cognitions, primary laws of 
 human reason, etc., etc. But science, forget- 
 ting — what the sure but vague and naive instinct 
 of primitive man recognizes— that you cannot get 
 
 [12] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 the rational out of the irrational, or the personal 
 out of the impersonal, tries to explain them as 
 merely the summing-up of the concrete experi- 
 ences of countless generations of men. Let it 
 be for the moment granted that the very con- 
 ditions of all reflection are gained by exercising 
 an already matured reflection, at some far-off 
 time in the history of the race. It still remains 
 true that for the individual person, as far back as 
 we can discover him, elements of his knowledge, 
 and certain instinctively aflBrmed facts of knowl- 
 edge, are given to, rather than acquired by, his 
 own thinking. 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to note — a 
 fact the importance and truth of which will be 
 discussed in another place — how modern psy- 
 chological science is reviving the view that so- 
 called "intuition" is more fundamental and more 
 sure in its conclusions than the logical processes, 
 in certain realms of truth. Indeed, the belief 
 of the Zulus that their seers can veritably exer- 
 cise the power of "opening the gates of distance" 
 is being revived by some of the students of telep- 
 athy and clairvoyance. In philosophy and art 
 none are surer that they have the truth given to 
 them than those who meet all objections with the 
 couplet : 
 
 "But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; 
 The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know." 
 
 Whatever remains true, or proves false, as to 
 the views of savage and so-called primitive man, 
 
 [13] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 or of the modern scientific man, regarding the 
 sources and the surety of his cognitive attain- 
 ments, he gains all he really knows, and all he 
 mistakenly thinks he knows, by a process of 
 personifying. In this sense of the word, "anthro- 
 pomorphizing" is as necessary for science as it 
 is for superstition: it is the person's only way of 
 knowing. 
 
 An extension of the problem, "What is it to be 
 a person?" and some further suggestions toward 
 a preliminary answer to this problem, may be 
 gained by considering how the person, man, 
 distinguishes between the good and the bad, 
 and between the better and the best. And here 
 some reference to the obscure and complicated 
 practice of tabu may profitably be made. If by 
 tabu we understand "a system of restrictions on 
 man's arbitrary use of things, enforced by a 
 dread of supernatural penalties," we find in- 
 stances of this practice among all so-called 
 primitive peoples. But the tabu is a form of 
 command, or a species of warning, which can 
 appeal only to the imagination, emotions, and 
 practical interests of a Person. In this form you 
 cannot say "Thou shalt not" to any animal. 
 For the command must arouse the picture of 
 that which is invisible and inaudible to sense. 
 "It is forbidden"; and if you disobey you will 
 be shut up in some enclosure, or tortured, or 
 whipped, — this is a comparatively gross and 
 sensuous way of controlling the conduct of man 
 
 [14] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 or animal. But the Noli me tangere of the tabu 
 is of a much more distinctly spiritual sort. "I 
 want this thing or that; for it looks good to eat, 
 or wear, or somehow possess." "You cannot 
 have it; for it is tabu." "But why can I not; 
 and what makes it tabu?" "The thing is sacred"; 
 or, "It is unclean and polluted." The Sal and 
 bamboos at Barmdeo in Northern India are 
 never cut, as they are sacred to the local Devi. 
 This other thing also is owing to the gods; it 
 is Corban; it must be burned, or thrown away, 
 or left for the gods to carry off; or if it is to be 
 enjoyed at all, this enjoyment should be only for 
 the priests or others connected with the divine 
 service. 
 
 The "must-not" for reasons which are not 
 wholly clear, and which in part at least lie out- 
 side of a definite experience with the pleasure or 
 the pain connected with the use of things, is not 
 as yet, perhaps, an undoubted form of a devel- 
 oped moral consciousness; but it is closely akin to, 
 and almost inevitably passes over into, a form of 
 moral consciousness. Its sanctions of reward 
 and punishment lie partly in the world invisible: 
 they are such as only a personal being has the 
 imagination to create, the intuition to appre- 
 ciate, the sense of time and the conception of the 
 continuity of personal life, to make practically 
 available. 
 
 The personal qualities which belong, as of 
 inexorable necessity, to all human artwork are 
 
 [15] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 even more clearly to be discerned. The office of 
 the creative personal imagination is essential for 
 even the lowest and beginning forms of art. 
 For art does not begin until imitation is tran- 
 scended. This is true of the basket -weaving of 
 the Redskins, the kava-howh of the Samoans, the 
 pottery of the ancient Mexicans, the native 
 music of the Chinese and Japanese. He who 
 sits at the potter's wheel, or carves his canoe, 
 or embellishes his bow, or holds the reed to his 
 lips, or the brush in his right hand, is a per- 
 son; and his artistic conception must partake of 
 his personality. Whatever work of his hand 
 expresses or excites the sentiment of beauty nec- 
 essarily conforms to the characteristics of his 
 personal life. This statement is most obviously 
 true when we come to study the higher things 
 of art, and especially as art ministers to the ideas 
 and ideals of religion. The bird may build its 
 nest, the spider weave its web, and the beaver 
 buUd its dam, in a manner to excite our admira- 
 tion for the constructive skill which our science, 
 for want of a more intelligible explanation, attrib- 
 utes to instinct rather than to the conscious 
 operation of the logical faculties. And much of 
 the work done by human artists is achieved in a 
 not wholly dissimilar way. But this very fact 
 only makes the clearer how different are the 
 most fundamental of the human artistic impulses 
 from anything attributable to a merely animal 
 life. The curious and sometimes monstrous or 
 [16] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 grotesque forms of the decorative art which 
 recent excavations disclose as having adorned 
 the temples and dweUings of ancient Assyria and 
 Babylonia, centuries before Christ, and which 
 show their derivation from the East as they linger 
 m Spain till the present day, illustrate the same 
 truth which Plotinus declared to have motived 
 the work of Phidias: "He did not create his 
 Zeus after any perceived pattern, but made him 
 such as he would be, if Zeus deigned to appear to 
 mortal eyes." The colossal statue of Buddha 
 at Kamakura, with all its suggestive impressive- 
 ness as to the depths of personality, is a joint 
 product of the aesthetical and the religious 
 imagination. So is the Taj Mahal, with its 
 religious meaning as a tomb and its quotations 
 from the Koran. These are products of man's 
 aspiration, as himseK a person, after a knowledge 
 of, and communication with, an Ideal Personal 
 Life. How could he construct any pictorial or 
 other representation of this life otherwise than 
 after the analogy of his own life? 
 
 Anthropology is the doctrine of man in his 
 race characteristics and racial development. 
 Psychology is the science which undertakes to de- 
 pict and explain the nature and the evolution of 
 the mental life, the mind, or soul, of the individ- 
 ual man. These two studies of man co-operate 
 and can neither be entirely separated theoreti- 
 cally nor kept wholly apart in their active pur- 
 suit. For, the individual person cannot come 
 
 [17] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 into existence apart from the race; and the mental 
 life of the individual cannot develop normally 
 except as subject to social influences. On the 
 other hand: our scientific knowledge, and even 
 our unclassified and not strictly proved impres- 
 sions of the anthropological order, cannot interpret 
 the general facts of this order, except through the 
 conscious processes of some individual mind. 
 This interpretative process is therefore itself a 
 personal achievement. Even as more emphati- 
 cally true must we apply the same statement to 
 what a recent writer has called those "dull 
 collections of sweeping generalizations that are 
 called sociology." 
 
 It appears then that everything which the 
 human being feels, or thinks, or does, evinces his 
 personality. His impulses, his instincts, his appe- 
 tites, all have the personal stamp. His knowl- 
 edge of the more ordinary practical type, and his 
 science and his art, are penetrated through and 
 through with qualities of the same stamp. In- 
 stead of its being true, if we are willing to accept 
 the truth as clearly expressed in deeds and in- 
 stitutions and mental and emotional attitudes, 
 that man ever considers himself as a mere thing 
 or a mere animal; the truth is the rather, that 
 he invariably considers things and animals — 
 especially if they give tokens of life, and. What 
 thing or animal does not at some time manifest 
 some token of some kind of life? — as more or 
 less like himself, and thus at the least endowed 
 
 [18] 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF FACT 
 
 with a partial and incomplete personality. The 
 naive and only half-conscious, the little self- 
 recognized philosophizing reflection of the prim- 
 itive man, coincides in his attitude with the 
 philosophy of the poetry of Browning: 
 
 "Mind seeks tx) see. 
 Touch, understand, by mind inside of me, 
 The outside mind — whose quickening I attain 
 To recognize." 
 
 In a word, man's most fundamental and prim- 
 itive beliefs and activities involve, if only in a 
 very discursive and inferential way, certain ideas 
 and corresponding attitudes toward, each one, 
 his own Self, toward other selves, and toward one 
 or more Over-selves. 
 
 [19] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WHAT IS IT TO BE A PERSON? 
 THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 'HE crowning achievement and supreme 
 definite expression of the reflective 
 
 J, powers of man is to be found in his 
 articulate speech, in the languages he has de- 
 veloped. We might then appeal to philology 
 with even greater confidence than that with 
 which we have taken our appeal to anthropology 
 and psychology for an answer, or at least sug- 
 gestions looking toward an approach to an an- 
 swer, to the question: What is it to be a person? 
 Books on either of these three studies of human 
 nature we have not undertaken to write at the 
 present time. We may start the trail, however, 
 and follow it a step or two into the jungle of con- 
 fused and contesting opinions, or toward some 
 sort of a pioneer's clearing, where perhaps a 
 humble cabin may be reached, by way of an out- 
 line sketch of three English words which have 
 now. become intimately connected with the con- 
 ception of personality in our present usage. The 
 first and lowliest, but not least interesting and 
 important, of these three words is the word 
 "Body." 
 
 [20] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 Now in certain circles of a hyper-sentimental 
 religiosity, or among those much devoted to a 
 rarified psychology or a mystical metaphysics, it 
 is assumed to be a non-essential, if not a positive 
 disadvantage for an animal who aspires to be a 
 person, to be also a body; or even to have a body, 
 if only he could somehow get rid of it and remain 
 and develop as a personality. We may readily 
 discover, however, that it is impossible to con- 
 ceive of a real person of the type afforded by 
 human beings, as existing or developing without 
 a body. 
 
 Let it not be forgotten that our inquiry is not, 
 what it is to be a disembodied soul, much less an 
 angelic or glorified spirit; but, the rather, what 
 it is to be a person as the human being is a person, 
 and is known to himself and to other selves as 
 personal. 
 
 The word body, in the significance which we 
 are seeking, died out in German and was replaced 
 by the word Leib (originally meaning "life"). 
 But this word, Leib, may itself be used as the 
 synonym for a person {die Person) or a man {der 
 Mensch). If we follow it, not so much in the 
 order of time as in the order of its rising signif- 
 icance, we find that in the older English a "man" 
 is called "a body" when viewed as an organic 
 unity, or as having a material frame. In this 
 respect, of course, man resembles the lower 
 animals. But even in early use the word was 
 almost exclusively applied to man rather than 
 
 [21'] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 any animal, and to the whole man. As says 
 Caxton: "He shold come fyght with hym body 
 for body" (or man for man). 
 
 For obvious reasons, the body of man easily 
 becomes contrasted with the soul of the same 
 being, — both together being thought of as 
 necessary and complementary for a complete 
 man. Thus Pope, in pompous and mystical, 
 semi-pantheistic language, can proclaim the 
 doctrine : 
 
 "All are but parts of one stupendous whole. 
 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul." 
 
 And the Apostle has it to say of his ecstatic 
 vision: "Whether in the body I cannot tell, 
 whether out of the body I cannot tell." Through 
 all its usage, however, the word retains a large 
 share of claim to be the equivalent of the person, 
 man or woman, high or low, as made known 
 through sense-perception to himself and to other 
 selves. Thus a man swears by his Self, as the 
 real thing, so to say, when he utters the oath 
 "body of me"; and expresses his belief in the 
 substantial reality of the Divine Being, when he 
 blasphemes by " God's body." Especially notable, 
 however, is the usage which raises and univer- 
 salizes the conception by making "a body" the 
 synonym for an individual human being of either 
 sex. The conception then includes the entire 
 material being of man as a sign and tangible 
 part of his personality, taken for the whole; 
 and chiefly in legal phrases or referring to social 
 [22] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 relations. In this meaning the word conven- 
 iently combines with several very significant 
 prefixes that give it a tinge of familiarity, pity, or 
 contempt. Thus, "anybody" may be a "no- 
 body," or make of himself a "somebody"; but 
 "everybody" must be "somebody" in particular; 
 and "nobody" can possibly be just "anybody" — 
 that is without the individuality of personality — 
 no matter how much of a "poor body" he or she 
 may be. 
 
 Somewhat contemporaneously, and always 
 in mutual dependence upon the full-orbed con- 
 ception of what it is to be a person, we may 
 trace the meanings given to the word "Soul" as 
 applied to the individual man. In its most vague 
 and general form the soul is the principle of life, 
 whether in man or animals, or even in plants. 
 Thus Dryden, in rendering the Georgics of 
 Vergil (III, 744) can say: "The thriven Calves 
 . . . render their sweet souls before the plenteous 
 Rack." And in mystical or poetical fashion one 
 may speak of a "soul of the world," an anima 
 mundi. 
 
 Then follows in the case of the word soul the 
 same contrast which was noted as following the 
 more advanced use of the word body. The 
 principle of thought, the conscious, — and now in 
 modern psychology as of old, — even the sub- 
 conscious mentality, the spiritual part of man, 
 comes to be regarded as having a sort of entity 
 existence separable from the bodily organism. 
 
 [23] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The soul is the "seat" of the emotions, feelings, 
 sentiments. It is the part of man to which 
 mtellectual or spiritual power belongs. We may 
 also include under this term the moral nature of 
 man; may indeed emphasize this side of his 
 complex personality as most of all the important 
 part of the functioning of the principle of man's 
 life. We may discuss its relations to other 
 fellow souls, to invisible spirits, and to God and 
 his Law, or the Divine Will concerning the rela- 
 tions of persons. We may ascribe immortality 
 to man's soul, and regard it as surviving after 
 the death of the body, and in this condition as 
 susceptible of happiness or misery in a future 
 state. We may even in our loose phraseology 
 consider the having, or the being, a soul, for pur- 
 poses historical, legal, or theological, the equiva- 
 lent to being a person. 
 
 By none of these devices, nor by any other 
 devices of thought or imagination, however 
 cunningly contrived, shall we justify the identi- 
 fication of the two conceptions, soul and person, 
 as affording any satisfactory answer to an in- 
 quiry into the origin, nature, development, and 
 destiny of man's personal life. Man thinks of 
 himself as a person and as "having" a soul. 
 But he has a body as well as a soul; and he 
 speaks of himself and other selves as having 
 souls, but not of his soul, or of their souls, as 
 having him, or having them. 
 
 Moreover, one person may have more than one 
 
 [24] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 soul; indeed, in the reflective judgment of tlie 
 great majority of the thoughtful, man, considered 
 as a person, absolutely needs more than one soul. 
 You cannot explain all that he is and does as 
 the experiences and performances of a single 
 soul. The natives of West Africa have four 
 souls each; the Sioux have three souls; some 
 Dakota tribes rejoice in the sacred number four; 
 other tribes of savages are proud of, or troubled 
 with, no fewer than six or seven souls. It is not, 
 however, savages only who think themselves 
 entitled to claim such a rich variety of souls. 
 In ancient Egypt the "darling idea" of the people 
 was the continued existence of their souls after 
 death. But at least three entities of a soul-like 
 character must be secured against decay in order 
 to make sure of this supremely desirable result. 
 Man's Ka was a self-existent entity which by its 
 presence bestowed upon him life and health and 
 joy. But the Ka itself needed food and drink to 
 preserve it, and to prevent hunger and thirst. 
 And besides this soul there was the ab, the im- 
 mortal heart of man, which stood in somewhat 
 the same relation to the material heart as the 
 Ka to the whole body. The third immortal 
 part of man was his Ba, or soul considered as 
 the principle of life. Its symbol was a human- 
 headed bird (or, later, a ram-headed scarab sens), 
 which at death flew away to be with the gods. 
 So Taoism in China provides each individual 
 with three souls; one remains with the corpse, 
 
 [25] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 one with the spirit's tablet, and one is carried o£E 
 to purgatory. The Platonic philosophy recognized 
 somewhat radical distinctions in the various psy- 
 chical functions of man's nature; and it thought 
 necessary a thumos, an epithumia, and a'nous, in 
 order to explain them all satisfactorily. The He- 
 brew distinction as prevailing in the Biblical writ- 
 ings, of the animal (nephesh), the distinctively 
 human (ruach,) and the divine (neshama), three 
 principles as existing in man, is not so radically 
 different from that of the Platonic philosophy. 
 
 Let not the modern psychologist dismiss all 
 this wandering of human reflective thinking 
 about its own nature, as without a significance 
 worthy of attention in our effort to unravel the 
 secret of personality, much less treat it with 
 patent scorn. For do you not, my friend, talk 
 glibly of double and triple personality, of sub- 
 conscious and even of unconscious psychoses, of 
 the proper use of the word "mind," if we throw 
 out of our vocabulary, or leave to the theologians, 
 the objectionable word "soul"; and do you 
 not discuss the difference between intuitions and 
 conscious logical processes, and whether the 
 animals have any experiences corresponding to 
 the moral, religious, or strictly sesthetical ideals 
 and aspirations; and, in fine, raise and attempt 
 to answer scores of questions that reveal the 
 richness and range of personal life as rather too 
 vast to make it comprehensible under any one 
 of the current conceptions of A Soul? 
 
 [26] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 There is another word, however, which more 
 than either of the two already analyzed has be- 
 come in our English usage the most prevalent 
 substitute and equivalent synonym for the meta- 
 physical conception underlying the word "per- 
 sonality." This is the word "Self," — a word of 
 obscure etymology, but found in early Gothic 
 and Scandinavian as implying an emphatic refer- 
 ence, whether to thing or to human individual, 
 as the only one of its precise kind in existence. 
 It speaks, therefore, of sameness and not merely 
 of similarity. It emphasizes the mysterious fact 
 of identity. Not infrequently in the older 
 English, but rarely in more recent Enghsh, one 
 may read such sentences as this: "If a man do 
 perform any praiseworthy action the self deed 
 will commend him though he hold his peace." 
 Very naturally, indeed quite inevitably, this word 
 combines with all the personal pronouns, and 
 thus affirms the invincible authority of self- 
 consciousness, which attributes to every in- 
 dividual human being a peculiar and continuous 
 sameness of his own. But it is social as well 
 as selfish in its courteous implication. For the 
 "my own self" of the friend or lover recognizes 
 the "loyal self," or "your dear sweet self," of 
 the friend or mistress. And finally, the pronoun, 
 with the freight of much reflective thinking on its 
 bosom, rises above "the threshold of conscious- 
 ness" and reveals its bulk as a carrier of the varied 
 wealth of man's personal life. It comes to mean 
 
 [27] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 the real "and intrinsic person"; the permanent 
 and identical subject of all the changing states. 
 This more modern meaning, which justifies its 
 use as a noun, is of all others, most important, 
 most convenient, most consonant with the mys- 
 terious facts of the personal life. It enables 
 every one who has attained to the appreciation 
 of himself as a person, to say: 
 
 "A secret Self I had enclos'd within, 
 That was not bounded with my clothes or skin." 
 
 "In reality," says Meredith, in his Harry Rich- 
 mond, "the busy little creature within me whom 
 we call self, was digging pits for comfort to flow 
 in of any kind, in any form." And surely we 
 may agree in full confidence with what a champion 
 of theological orthodoxy has said: "You cannot 
 call up any wilder vision than a city in which 
 men ask themselves, if they have any selves." 
 "Ask themselves!:" Yes, but who are the selves 
 that ask themselves? and. What does this really 
 amusing question have to tell us about the true 
 nature and current activities of a Self? This, at 
 the very least: A Self can ask itself questions. 
 This, in the same way, no animal can do. 
 
 English metaphysical philosophy, especially 
 from the time of Locke onwards, begins seriously 
 to debate what it is to be a Self; and its inquiry 
 amounts to about the same thing as trying to 
 find a satisfactory answer to the problem: What 
 is it to be a Person? 
 
 The combinations of the word self with all 
 
 [28] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 sorts of adjectives, participles, adverbs, pronouns, 
 and other nouns, follow in bewildering confu- 
 sion, — all with the seeming attempt to describe 
 the endless variety of things which any real and 
 fairly well-equipped Self may be, attempt, and 
 do. One may find such compounds by the score 
 in any large dictionary. Any one who is even 
 moderately ingenious and inventive, may make 
 a new combination to suit himself; and if he 
 have good luck as an author, he may possibly 
 get his invention adopted by one or more other 
 selves. We will ourselves make a venture in 
 this direction and call this the " self -deploying " 
 and " self -exploiting " faculty of the self's real 
 Self. 
 
 All these and other suggestions are confirmed 
 and more amply illustrated by the history of 
 the word we have chosen to define our inquiry. 
 And fortunately, the history of this word is, in 
 the line of its tradition to our present uses for 
 science and philosophy, tolerably clear and full. 
 In the Latin a persona was a mask used by the 
 actor in a play; and the persona dramatis was 
 the character assumed and acted by one who 
 played or performed any part in a dramatic 
 representation. This meaning did not descend 
 in the English usage; probably because here its 
 earliest usage seems to have applied it to the 
 legal or juridical person. A quite similar thought, 
 however, belongs to the word as Shakespeare 
 uses it, when in "Midsummer Night's Dream " 
 
 [29] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 he refers to one actor as "he who speaketh under 
 the person of Phcebus"; and declares of the 
 player with a lanthorn: "He comes to disfigure, 
 or to present, the person of Moon-shine." And 
 Jeremy Taylor affirms in one of his sermons: 
 "No man can long put on a person and act a 
 part, but his evil manners will peep through the 
 corners of his white robe." In all such applica- 
 tions of the term person to the individual human 
 being, it is what the man appears to be, his 
 representation to others, rather than his real 
 character, which is brought to the fore. This is 
 conspicuous enough in the facetious sentence of 
 Fielding: "There is a certain person in the world, 
 who in a certain person's eye, is a more agreeable 
 person, than any person, amongst all the persons, 
 whom persons think agreeable persons." 
 
 Perhaps the first stage to be noted in the de- 
 velopment of the more profound metaphysical 
 significance of the word person and its kindred 
 terms is reached when, in legal usage, persons 
 are distinguished from things. "The objects of 
 dominion or property," says Blackstone, "are 
 things, as distinguished from persons." 
 
 When followed along this line of development, 
 the importance of what appears to the eye as 
 revealing the invisible in the nature of man 
 clings persistently to the conception of per- 
 sonality. Bodily presence or bearing, and so 
 something like the legal meaning of a "body 
 corporate," is necessary for all organizations of 
 
 [30] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 persons which are to have legal or social standing 
 in the sight of their fellows. The individual 
 man or woman who appears to others worthy of 
 some particular notice — somehow distinguished 
 — is not simply a person, but has become a 
 personage. And without pronouncing, otherwise 
 than slyly, on the worth of the title, Gilbert can 
 announce some of the characters in his comic 
 opera, "The Mikado": "They are not young 
 ladies, they are young persons." 
 
 It is philosophy and theology, however, which 
 have lifted the conception attached to the word 
 Person into its loftiest, if at the same time most 
 mystical and metaphysically profound meaning. 
 As early as the beginning of the third century 
 of our era the Latin Church-Father TertuUian 
 used the word persona to designate one of the 
 Trinity. But its inadequacy in this relation has 
 in general been acknowledged even by the au- 
 thorities among the theologians who accepted the 
 title of Trinitarians. This has not been because 
 of their doubt about applying the conception of 
 personality to the Divine Being, but because of 
 their inability to conceive of a strictly personal 
 three-foldness consistent with the unity of a 
 perfect personality. This inability is frankly 
 acknowledged by Cardinal Newman, and at- 
 tributed to its source, in the sentence: "The 
 mysteriousness of the doctrine evidently lies in 
 our inability to conceive a sense of our word per- 
 son, such, as to be more than a mere character, 
 
 [31] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 yet less than an individual intelligent being." 
 Perhaps we shall find it more correct and illumin- 
 ing to say, when speaking from the metaphysical 
 point of view, that it is possible for a Person of 
 the most exalted conceivable capacity, to mani- 
 fest his personality in more than one quite dis- 
 tinctly different way, without at all sacrificing 
 the essential unity of his personal being or per- 
 sonal life. 
 
 Whatever of truth or vain speculation there 
 may be in what has just been suggested as 
 to possible developments of any satisfactory 
 doctrine of man's own personal life, and of his 
 limitations of knowledge by his constitutional 
 compulsion to gain knowledge by a process of 
 personifying, from the point of view of philo- 
 logical fact — and this is the point of view we 
 are now taking — the truth is tolerably clear 
 and immensely significant. To be a person, 
 as every normally developed human being is a 
 person, is to have a body and soul, or mind, that 
 can be distinguished from all other however 
 similar beings, a consciously separate or individual 
 existence with an intelligence and will "of its 
 own," as we are wont to say. 
 
 All the answers which have been given or only 
 implied in the facts examined hitherto leave in 
 very indeterminate and somewhat confused form 
 the solution of the problem. What is it to be a 
 person? and What are the essential characteris- 
 tics of a truly personal life? The facts do not 
 
 [33] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 organize themselves into the form of systematic 
 philosophy or of the formulas and laws, so-called, 
 which bear the stamp of inductive science. They 
 do, however, represent the results of the primary 
 stages of man's reflective powers, as these results 
 are recorded and expressed in his most natural 
 and fundamental emotions, thoughts, and practi- 
 cal activities. And when we consider more 
 carefully the language which men have employed 
 to embody in a more definitive way their self- 
 consciously expressed opinions as to the nature 
 and capacities of the selfhood that is in them, the 
 selves they really are, we are consulting guide- 
 boards whose fingers indicate several roads along 
 which we may hope profitably to institute a 
 search for the more expanded, logically arranged, 
 and argumentatively defensible answer to the 
 question: What is it to be a person.!* 
 
 But before setting out on any of these roads it 
 would seem well worth while to gather into the 
 form of definite propositions the naive doctrine 
 of man, reflecting about himself in the manner of 
 involuntarily philosophizing rather than that 
 of the metaphysics of the "philosopher of the 
 chair." Even in doing this, it is not altogether 
 unlikely that we may encounter the secret dis- 
 content, it not open scorn, of those who a priori 
 reject all attempts at what they call metaphysics. 
 We are believers in metaphysics, and in the partial 
 and relative value of metaphysical system. But 
 we also believe in the propriety, and even the 
 
 [33] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 obligation, of basing metaphysics on scientifically 
 established facts. We shall undoubtedly have 
 to acknowledge at the end of investigation that 
 the deeper mysteries of man's personality, are 
 left largely unexplained. But such is the end of 
 every investigation, however ably and however 
 far conducted, into every form of existence and, 
 as well, into every simplest event of our most 
 ordinary daily experience. 
 
 The most obvious truth which seems to be 
 impressed upon man by the primitive use of his 
 reflective powers is the two-foldness of his nature 
 as a person. He cannot avoid thinking of him- 
 self as having a body and as also having a soul. 
 Indeed, when considering this twofold existence 
 from one point of view, he does not hesitate to 
 speak of himself as "a body"; from the other 
 point of view as "a soul." He finds little diffi- 
 culty in speaking of himself as having a body, 
 and also as having a soul. In all ordinary activi- 
 ties and experiences he has no great difficulty in 
 distinguishing the part which each of the two- 
 fold beings that unite to make his selfhood is 
 taking in the particular transaction. By the 
 same activity of imagination he abstracts one or 
 more of his souls from his own body, and straight- 
 way clothes it for the time with another and 
 perhaps quite different body; or he imagines 
 another soul, more or less similar to his own, and 
 not always cordially welcomed, entering in and 
 taking possession of his own body. But ordi- 
 
 [34] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 narily, for non-mystical performances, the same 
 body and soul remain on terms of limited co- 
 operation and cordial alliance. If he wishes to 
 manifest his personality, and fish, hunt, dance, 
 go to war, appear at court or in the halls of 
 legislation, or in the place of social festivities, he 
 must do it through a body; but when his soul is 
 parted from his body, the body becomes useless 
 for these purposes unless it is somehow ensouled 
 again. 
 
 This two-foldness, however, does not destroy a 
 certain unity of the person or Self; on the con- 
 trary, it constitutes that unity. Whether one 
 speaks of being a body or of being a soul, or 
 speaks of one's seK as having both body and 
 soul, some sort of a tie or bond, or law of unity, 
 or formal, or causal and real relation, between 
 the body and the soul in the individual man is 
 necessarily implied. Complete and permanent 
 dissociation of the two would dissolve the per- 
 sonal lite as that of a human being acting in self- 
 like ways. Such a dissociation would be equiv- 
 alent to a total change of personality. The 
 common-sense view of the nature of this bond 
 has, for all practical purposes, been not difiicult 
 to ascertain. But the metaphysics of it makes 
 it necessary to set the voluntary activities of 
 man upon a plane so distinctly higher than that 
 allotted by science to the changing interrelation 
 of mere things as to introduce an endless dis- 
 cussion of a metaphysical sort. How can body 
 
 [35] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 and soul act- and react on each other so as to con- 
 stitute the unity which belongs to a personal 
 life and personal development? This question 
 has afforded an unsolved riddle to the reflective 
 powers of man. 
 
 But whatever answer must be given to this 
 riddle, and whether any answer at all can be 
 given, or even be attempted, the evidence of his 
 deeds, and the import of the language which he 
 employs, show plainly enough that man regards 
 himself as having an individuality that is beyond 
 comparison with that of animals or things. The 
 individuality of personality is peculiar. It implies 
 5eZ/-differentiation and sei!/-identification. This 
 conviction of so peculiar an individuality of 
 existence and development is a distinguishing 
 mark of every person. It furnishes the most 
 essential content of the word Self. Essentially 
 to confuse or confound one's Self with some other 
 Self is to do dishonor to the proudest claim to 
 the possession of a real personal life. One person 
 may be similar to another in a great variety of' 
 more or less important ways. But to lose the 
 capacity of differentiating one's Self from that of 
 any other, or to identify one's Self with that of 
 any other, would abolish all claim for any body 
 or soul to be a true and complete person. 
 
 Here again, the attempt to tell in what pre- 
 cisely this identity consists, and how the dif- 
 ferentiating act and habit of practice actually 
 works, involves the inquiry at once in the mazes 
 
 [36] 
 
THE WITNESS OF WORDS 
 
 of psychological analysis and subtle metaphysical 
 dispute. This common-sense assumption — uni- 
 versal and inevitable as it undoubtedly is — 
 constitutes another of the mysteries of the per- 
 sonal life. Its solution, even as regards the 
 dififerentiation and identity of the individual 
 man as a body, is not purely a question of physics 
 or physiology; as regards the identification and 
 differentiation of the individual man as a soul, it 
 is not merely a question of descriptive and ex- 
 planatory psychology. For it is the reality and 
 fundamental significance, and the final purpose, 
 of the identity which is claimed for the human 
 person that invites and demands our most stren- 
 uous use of the powers of reflection. 
 
 The very word "Personality" is an imperative 
 demand for that use of the reflective powers 
 out of which springs metaphysics, whether of the 
 naive and unintentional, or of the trained and 
 systematic sort. Like other words in "ity," this 
 word smacks of a claim to express reality, to 
 suggest and embody the quality or qualities 
 which make a thing to be what it really is. But 
 we have already seen — a truth which will con- 
 tinually appear more clearly — that a great and 
 almost bewildering variety of capacities and 
 aptitudes is assembled, so to say, in the concep- 
 tion of human beings in general, and of every 
 particular human being, every individual person, 
 and then bound together in a kind of unity by 
 the activity of self-differentiation and self-identi- 
 
 [37] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 fication. T6 show how this can be possible, or 
 at any rate how, as a matter of experienced fact, 
 this is accompHshed, is in large part the problem 
 concerned with the nature and development of 
 personality. 
 
 [38] 
 
CHAPTER m 
 TEE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 ^HE uncriticised opinions as expressed 
 in the actions and language of the 
 
 J[ multitude of men are, indeed, far 
 enough from affording a final answer to our 
 question: What is it to be a person after the 
 fashion of every normal individual man? The 
 opinions themselves are expressed in the form of 
 assumptions, the ground in fact and validity of 
 which cannot be a priori assumed. When we 
 raise the question of right, however, we under- 
 take that difficult task of self-criticism to which, 
 in more modern times, the philosopher Immanuel 
 Kant turned the attention of the most profoundly 
 reflective minds of the Western world. The 
 thinkers of the Orient and of classical Greece 
 had centuries before approached the same ques- 
 tion in a different way. 
 
 As regarded from the point of view held by 
 biological evolution, man assumes in fact the 
 attitude toward himself of the reflective mind. 
 But the earlier products of this attitude are a 
 host of assumptions which must themselves be 
 subjected to further examination by higher and 
 more thorough processes of disciplined reflection. 
 
 [39] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 We should be ungrateful, however, and un- 
 reasonable in our ingratitude toward the 
 commonsense of humanity at large, if we did not 
 acknowledge the helpfulness of its crude but 
 shrewd analysis of the more fundamental elements 
 of the conception of personality. To enumerate 
 some of the results of this analysis: Every person 
 has a body and also a soul; and both body and 
 soul have some sort of reality. But what is the 
 nature of the reality of each; and do they both 
 possess the same kind of reality? The assump- 
 tions of naive reflection do not answer either of 
 these questions. Body and soul are somehow 
 bound together, are in reality so related that they 
 develop under conditions of mutual dependence, 
 and thus constitute the imity of a personal life. 
 But how shall we conceive of the nature of this 
 so-called bond, or relation in reality, so as to 
 accommodate it to what we know of the nature of 
 bodies in general, of human bodies and souls, 
 in particular; and of the actual relations in which 
 diflEerent bodies and souls stand to each other 
 in the world at large, so far as known to man? 
 Surest of anything connected with his personal 
 life is every man that he has some kind of sep- 
 arateness from all other individuals; that he 
 is a self-possessed individual; and that this 
 individuality includes and depends upon the 
 identity of personal life through its various 
 stages of development. A certain kind of seK- 
 sameness is essential for the very constitution 
 
 [40] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 of a real Self. But what sort of identity can 
 that possibly be, which knows its self subject to 
 incessant change? What kind of self -same- 
 ness can truthfully be predicated of a Self whose 
 very existence at all depends on an unceasing 
 adaptation to environment, conditioned upon an 
 equally unceasing change of associations and 
 habits of action and reaction? Here indeed is a 
 problem which may well give, and which in fact 
 has given, stimulus to the loftiest flights of the 
 speculative powers, and to the most profoimd 
 and mysterious of metaphysical speculations. 
 
 Under all these separate problems, as furnishing 
 the foundations upon which they must all rest, if 
 at all ia security, and penetrating them all like the 
 most subtile of atmospheres, and above them all, 
 hanging like an impenetrable cloud of mist, or as 
 a quiet sky through the fleecy clouds of which 
 rays of the sunshine of faith and hope are break- 
 ing, is the problem raised by man's claim to the 
 reaUty of his knowledge, the essential truthful- 
 ness of the ideas he attains of himself, of the world 
 in which he lives, and of his actual relations to 
 that world. Something must be attempted in 
 answer to all these questions, if any approach is 
 to be made, by whatever method of approach, to 
 the secrets of man's personal life. 
 
 We shall, first of all, have something to say of 
 the origin and nature of that unity which man as 
 a person supposes himself to possess. What is it 
 really; and how is it actually brought about? 
 
 [41.] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Such, however, is the nature of this inquiry that 
 it inevitably leads the mquirer on into every 
 other one of the particular problems, the solution 
 of which, if it could be made, would help to un- 
 fold the truth as to the origin, nature, develop- 
 ment, and destiny of man's personal life. We 
 seek now some sort of a centre, or simple concep- 
 tion, to serve as an area, rather than a point, 
 around which we may group the other considera- 
 tions that will throw added light on the unity 
 implied in the very title to be a "person." In 
 this search psychology must be our principal and 
 unfailing guide. But it must be psychology, 
 not merely as experimental and descriptive, but 
 as including also something from the philosophy 
 of mind. 
 
 The most obvious mental operation which lies 
 at the base of all the process of assembhng, 
 grouping, and so unifying the life of both body 
 and mind, is the so-called process of association. 
 In its more primary forms, it is passive rather 
 than active, and does not demand any definite 
 activity of will, at any rate in the form of delib- 
 erate selection or other manner of choice. As 
 considered in its effects it differs little or not at 
 all from the similar processes in the mental life 
 of the more intelligent of the animals. Under 
 its influence different stimuli of the same sense, 
 successive or nearly simultaneous, become fused 
 or united in such a way as to arouse and guide 
 the mind into its primary judgments as to the 
 
 [42] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 meaning and uses of the different parts of one's 
 own body and of other things. By the refinement 
 and subtlety which practice gives, the bhnd are 
 enabled to substitute associations of the sense 
 of touch for those which others obtain only or 
 chiefly through the sense of sight. The various 
 combinations of sight and touch which are es- 
 sential for the recognition in practical ways of 
 environing things, and for the uses of things, are 
 made possible for the most part by passive and 
 relatively uncontrolled associations. Without 
 entering further into details along this line it 
 may be said, that in a world which afforded the 
 mind no fixedness of associations — if such an 
 inconceivable jumble of outside phantasmagoric 
 existences could be called a world — no personal 
 life could, so to say, centre itself, much less de- 
 velop the unity of a rational seKhood. 
 
 But the action of the uncontrolled principle of 
 association results in errors of sense and of judg- 
 ment, just as truly, if not as frequently, as in 
 facts of perception and intuitions of the nature 
 of reality. By covering one eye and wearing 
 before the other an optical instrument which 
 gave an inverted image of objects. Professor 
 Stratton succeeded in creating associations be- 
 tween visual objects, and between such objects 
 and the movements of the body, as served in a 
 way for practical purposes, but which were 
 quite false when compared with what we are 
 wont to consider truths of fact in such matters. 
 
 [43] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The whole psychological doctrine of what we 
 call "errors of sense" is based upon our knowl- 
 edge of the influence of passive associations. 
 
 Something important must be added, then, to 
 our ideas of the principle of association as it 
 operates in man's case to brmg into a sort of 
 unity the personal life. And this is what we 
 call the Will. Attention, which is an act of will; 
 memory directed to the results of past experi- 
 ences by an act of will; selection of the moments 
 or aspects of every experience in which some 
 interest is involved; all these, and other forms 
 of iutelligent and more or less deliberate activity, 
 must be evoked, if the principle of association 
 is to contribute what is demanded of it as a 
 unifying factor in the personal life. 
 
 In its earlier and less intelligent forms, the 
 word "fusion" pretty well describes, though in 
 a figurative way, the passive character of the 
 associative process. Feelings fuse with feelings; 
 sensations of one sense with those of another 
 sense; feelings with sensations, and feelings and 
 sensations with mental images or so-called ideas. 
 
 Both in animals and in man, learning as dis- 
 tinguished from what in our ignorance we call 
 "instinct" is dependent upon the formation of 
 new and more complex associations. These secure 
 more prompt and accurate responses to stimuli by 
 "cutting out" the delay, the pause of hesitation, 
 required for an act of will. Even in uni-cellular 
 animals a certain modified reaction may be 
 
 [44] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 temporarily induced by persistently changing 
 the character of the customary stimuli. Yet with 
 such low forms of life, it is diflScult or impossible 
 to secure any evidence of that retention which is 
 necessary to any approach to a true "learning." 
 But the higher animals may be trained to an 
 extent which in some cases startles us with its 
 resemblance to the higher and more intelligent 
 reactions of human beings as modified by passive 
 associations. As long, however, as intelligent 
 will is not put into the process of learning under 
 the principle of association, its tendency is to 
 reduce the man to a machine rather than to elevate 
 him into the ranking of a real person. 
 
 Various suggestive divisions have been made 
 of the kinds of association in man's case, and 
 various attempts to bring the different kinds 
 under some one psychological principle. Even 
 when we approach the subject from the more 
 purely physiological and experimental rather than 
 the speculative or metaphysical point of view, we 
 are obliged to recognize a class which merits the 
 title of "controlled associations." Thus we em- 
 phasize the activity of personal will. For learn- 
 ing as involving controlled associations, the 
 "setting of the mind" as a preparatory adjust- 
 ment is indispensable. Voluntarily to give oneself 
 up to learning is human. Feelings of recognition, 
 such as we have reason to believe are in the case 
 of the personal life different from any experiences 
 of the animal, are implied in the active associa- 
 
 [45] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 tions of human beings. The deliberate act of 
 selection iavolves the activity of a personal will. 
 Under the influence of the higher social, artistic, 
 moral and religious sentiments, associations are 
 created and sustained in the individual person 
 and in collections of persons; such as the devel- 
 opment of the sciences and the improvement of 
 civilization demands. These associations are well 
 worthy to be called "wiU-fuU," — not in the mean- 
 ing of being irrational and arbitrary; but, the 
 rather, in the meaning of being centred in, and 
 springing out of, the intelligent and purposeful 
 will of a developing personal life. The will to 
 science is essentially a personal will. 
 
 There is another factor, or set of factors, 
 which seems to be even more primary and animal- 
 like in its relation to the production of a sort of 
 individuality than is the principle of passive 
 association. For this we have need of an alto- 
 gether satisfactory word. In the older psychol- 
 ogy it bore the title of "Temperament"; and 
 a somewhat elaborate doctrine of temperaments 
 was discussed at length. By a temperament was 
 ordinarily understood any marked type of mental 
 constitution and development due to inherited 
 characteristics of the bodily organism. Some 
 of the words used to describe the different types 
 of men referred to this physical conception of 
 the nature of temperament; others bore relics 
 of old-time superstitions as to the influences of 
 the heavenly bodies over the prenatal life, or 
 
 [46] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 over the infant at the date of its birth. Thus 
 the "sanguine" man was full-blooded; the 
 "choleric" man was full of bile; and the unfortu- 
 nate possessor of a "melancholic" temperament 
 was full of black bile. Do we not read in Shake- 
 speare's " King John " ? 
 
 " Or, if that surly Spirit, melancholy. 
 Had baked thy blood and made it heavy-thick. 
 Which else runs tickling up and down the veins." 
 
 When the beliefs of astrology were still rife, 
 there was found in the determining power of 
 the planets a reason why some men were "Jovial," 
 others "Satm-nine," and still others "Mercurial," 
 in temperament. Today the scores of combina- 
 tions effected by the attempts to solve the prob- 
 lem of heredity have not made us much wiser 
 as to just how it is that the original individuality 
 of the personal life and development of man has 
 its basis laid in the past; and as to telluric in- 
 fluences upon the constitution and functions of 
 the nervous mechanism, we have little more 
 positive information than had the men of former 
 generations. 4 
 
 In spite of our ignorance when it comes to 
 demanding a precise and verifiable science of the 
 subject, there is not the slightest doubt that there 
 are endless differences in the capacities and ten- 
 dencies with which the millions of human beings 
 born today, and bom through all the past genera- 
 tions of human history, enter upon the realization 
 of a personal life. There is as little doubt that 
 
 [47] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 upon these differences the differences in personal 
 character and personal development largely de- 
 pend. But this is far from proving that the 
 variations in the grades of richness in human 
 thought and feeling, and in the degree of lofty 
 attainment, are strictly conditioned upon such 
 factors. There still remains at the centre the 
 shrine consecrated to a 'personal will. 
 
 For those influences which do not find their 
 centre in a personal will, the rather vague but 
 convenient word "disposition" is frequently em- 
 ployed. This word has the advantage that it does 
 not, like the word "temperament," imply any 
 particular theory as to its origin and application 
 to different individuals. In all the races of men, 
 and even in the breeds of the higher animals, 
 the facts force us to recognize marked differ- 
 ences of disposition. The individual members 
 of the different races and breeds are just naturally 
 disposed to certain characteristic forms of re- 
 action under a given set of circumstances. The 
 reactions may be in the form, not only of un- 
 conscious movements and so-called innate habits, 
 but also in notably different types of emotion. 
 It seems also to be a general fact of zoology that 
 the higher in the scale of evolution any animal 
 species is placed, the more variation in the 
 natural disposition may be traced in the individ- 
 ual members of the species. The disposition 
 of dogs and horses is more nearly personal, in the 
 more loosely defined use of the word, than is the 
 
 [48] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 disposition of cobras and spiders. As a species 
 of conscious reaction, we probably have no 
 reason to attribute disposition to any one amoeba 
 or other animal of the uni-cellular type. Dis- 
 position in every individual man, whether it be 
 the so-called natural or the so-called acquired, is, 
 however, an exceedingly complicated affair. Its 
 influence extends to all the movements of a 
 bodily sort, and to the entire involved life of 
 emotion and ideation. Converted by a con- 
 venient figure into a sort of independent force, 
 residing as it were outside of the Self, we speak 
 of this complex of natural aptitudes and ten- 
 dencies, as though it dominated and controlled 
 the personal life. But such personification of 
 disposition should not be allowed to obscure the 
 important truth that the centre of this very 
 complex is the will. Thus we speak a profound 
 metaphysical truth, when we characterize some 
 men as born with a weak will, and others with a 
 strong will; some with a bad will, and others 
 with a good will. The kindly disposition and 
 the mahcious disposition, the generous disposi- 
 tion and the selfish disposition; the truthful 
 disposition and the crafty and deceitful disposi- 
 tion; — all dispositions have their centre in the 
 will. 
 
 That the native disposition of any person may 
 be either strengthened or weakened by the passive 
 associations due to environment, is a popular 
 opinion confirmed by all that we know of the way 
 
 [49] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 in which men think, feel, and behave. A kindly 
 disposition is cherished by fortunate and sym- 
 pathetic surroundings; or it may be soured by 
 surroundings of the opposite kind. The disposi- 
 tion to cruelty, except perhaps in the cases of 
 those degenerates which are sometimes called 
 "monsters," may be modified by the steady 
 influence of association with kindly souls. But 
 as soon as the activities are aroused on which 
 the evolution of a more strictly personal life 
 depends, we begin to recognize and to emphasize 
 more and more the control of disposition by deeds 
 of will. 
 
 There are acquired as well as native disposi- 
 tions. Every experience modifies, in however 
 slight degree, both the nervous system and the 
 mental habit, and so contributes something 
 toward the forming of what Professor Stout has 
 significantly called a "disposition" toward new 
 experiences. In this way reproductive tenden- 
 cies and aptitudes are produced in every indi- 
 vidual. It is the character of these tendencies 
 and aptitudes which gives individuality to the 
 personal life and personal development. Again 
 in our attempt to account for this class of phe- 
 nomena, and to determine the laws which explain 
 them, we come upon that central mysterious area 
 of the human being which we call his Will. 
 
 As resulting from the action and reaction of 
 disposition and association, habits are formed. 
 By all consent, every man may be known as just 
 
 [50] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 that sort of a Self and no other, by knowing 
 what his habits are. Although we recognize the 
 fact that it is possible to form, within compara- 
 tively narrow limits, new habits that are to a 
 degree inconsistent with their native tendencies, 
 in the lower animals, this must be done mainly 
 by the pressure of outside influences. In quite 
 strictly similar manner we correct the baby's 
 habit of sucking its thumb, or the child's tendency 
 to left-handedness. This way of forming and 
 changing habits, regarded as a pretty purely 
 mechanical affair, has aptly been called a proc- 
 ess, now of "stamping in" and now of "stamping 
 out." The fundamental idea of all habit-forma- 
 tion is that of securing the retention of the results 
 of behavior in the past, in the form of more or 
 less decided and fixed tendencies to repeat the 
 same kind of behavior. 
 
 If, however, the forming of habits in man's 
 case were confined to the effects of an external 
 sort, its mechanism might give an appearance of, 
 but could not give reality to, the unity of a truly 
 personal life. In man's case, what Mr. Bagehot 
 has so expressively called "the making and the 
 breaking of the cake of custom" must be con- 
 stantly taking place. And the hammer that forges 
 or shatters the substance of however hardened a 
 character must strike from within, must signify 
 nothing less than the aroused energy of a personal 
 will. 
 
 In the more complicated habits of human 
 
 [51] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 beings, such as are motived and guided by sesthet- 
 ical, moral, social, and religious ideas, we recog- 
 nize in still higher degrees those considerations 
 which serve to contrast the simpler reactions 
 required in all acts of learning, as performed by 
 man, with the corresponding reactions as per- 
 formed by the more intelligent of the lower ani- 
 mals. These are greater fertility in association; 
 greater selective attention; more intelligent recog- 
 nition of the purposefulness of behavior; but 
 above all, a larger sphere of self-control, — if, 
 indeed, any animal body that is not also gifted 
 with a touch of personality can be said to be 
 capable of a genuine seZf-control. To these 
 advantages will have to be added, in the sequel, 
 a multitude of sentiments and ideas, to which 
 the animal can make no response in the form of 
 habits of behavior; because these sentiments and 
 ideas never enter the horizon of the animal 
 consciousness. 
 
 In psychological circles many elaborate and 
 interesting attempts have been made to reduce 
 the nature and unfolding of man's mental life to 
 a mechanism of ideas. The most successful of 
 these attempts was probably instituted by Her- 
 bart, and carried, with an immense store of learn- 
 ing and admirable ingenuity, to its highest form 
 by his great pupil Volkmann von Volkmar in his 
 "Lehrbuch der Psychologic." When criticizing 
 the so-called Herbartian psychology we can in fair- 
 ness no more agree with Professor James in calling 
 [52] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 it "glib jargon," "exploded psychology," "hid- 
 eously fabulous performances," than with those 
 adoring disciples who have founded their so- 
 called "pedagogy" upon it as a unique and 
 exclusive basis. 
 
 If we regard "so-called ideas" in their passive 
 aspect solely, there is no doubt that much of 
 man's learning and growth in knowledge is 
 founded upon — to employ the Herbartian phrase 
 — "the action and reaction of ideas." Partial 
 psychical processes of ideation, and tendencies to 
 such processes, or representative images, do in 
 fact combine to form complex fields of conscious- 
 ness over which we have little or no control. 
 The possible oddities and whimsicalities of the 
 mechanical fusion of ideas are almost limitless. 
 Who of us is there, whatever his attainment in 
 self-control and in the profoundest activities of 
 the reflective consciousness, that does not feel 
 himself hampered and almost enslaved by some 
 of his "ideas" thus passively formed.? One would 
 gladly throw them off. But did Immanuel Kant 
 by writing in his diary "Remember to forget 
 Lampe" (his discharged body servant) really 
 succeed in forgetting Lampe? We read of one 
 learned man who, when a boy, in order to lose no 
 time, had practised committing books to memory 
 while on the full run. Years afterwards the sight 
 of a book mastered in that way brought up the 
 recollection of its contents fused with the flitting 
 images of the pahsades and hedges by which he 
 
 [53] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 had run while reading it for the first time. 
 Another, who in his youth had worked as an 
 apprentice for a hatter, could never look on 
 black wainscotting (like that of the room in 
 which he had worked) without the collective 
 heterogeneous mental picture of all former sensa- 
 tions and feelings — smell of varnish, etc. — 
 being reproduced. Conversely, at the smell of 
 varnish, all the composite picture of his old 
 disagreeable life arose into consciousness. The 
 learned Jew Maimon is said always to have ac- 
 companied any very strenuous mental effort — 
 for example, studying Euler's mathematical works 
 — with "Talmudic intoning and movement of 
 the body"; because he originally mastered the 
 writings of the synagogue in that way.^ 
 
 If the mechanism of ideas covered the entire 
 field of man's mental development he could 
 never attain to a genuine personality. His 
 mental life might indeed be bound together in 
 this way, as with chains of steel. But it would 
 not be the mental life of a person; and the in- 
 dividual could never achieve personality. Nor 
 could this achievement be secured, if to this 
 principle of mechanism we added a large field 
 for the sprouting of spontaneously generated but 
 uncontrolled ideas of the most exalted character. 
 Let it be granted that sometimes, in a state of 
 
 'Quoted from the author's "Psychology, Descriptive and Ex- 
 planatory," p. 257; where a detailed treatment of the subject will 
 be found. 
 
 [54] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 so-called inspiration, Philo Judseus had "thoughts 
 fall from heaven like a shower of snow, or like 
 seed from the hand of the sower," into his mind: 
 but science, and wisdom in practical affairs, or 
 even the "plain man's" ordinary knowledge, does 
 not come in that way. The maudlin and inco- 
 herent utterances of the dreamer and the drunken 
 man do not give us the key with which to unlock 
 all the storehouses of human thought and mental 
 development. These storehouses are full of the 
 treasure secured only by deliberate and pur- 
 poseful thinking. Such thinking is an act of will. 
 When we speak of the ideas of any individual 
 man we do not simply mean — be that man 
 savage or savant, "plain man" or philosopher — 
 a fortuitous assemblage of mental images, or a 
 train of such images that are being hauled along 
 one after another as a locomotive pulls after it, 
 in a fixed order of succession, the loaded freight 
 cars that have been selected by a will not its own, 
 for its appointed task. A man's ideas are indeed 
 characteristic of his individuality. At the same 
 time they partake essentially of the period in 
 which he lives, and of the habits of the surround- 
 ing members of his race. But they are not all 
 passively determined in this relatively external 
 and unselflike way. What every man "thinks in 
 his heart," that also, and pre-eminently, is he. 
 It is chiefly such thoughts which distinguish him 
 as a person from all other persons of every time 
 and race. The sphere of such thought is in most 
 
 [55] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 men, indeed, very limited. As it is wont to be 
 said of the multitude: "They have not many 
 ideas of their own; they do very little thinking 
 of their own." But the development of the per- 
 sonal life, to however low a level of genuine 
 personality, requires purposeful observation and 
 purposeful reflection. Such observation and re- 
 flection are acts of maturing personal will. 
 
 The higher constructive activities which must 
 operate in order to the creation of personality 
 require more detailed treatment than can be 
 given them in the present connection. But at 
 least the mention of them is required in the search 
 for some centre of personality, around which we 
 may group the other more obvious capacities 
 and activities in which consists the personal life. 
 Of these we will now speak a word about memory, 
 especially the recognitive, the memory of a Self. 
 It is plain that without such memory there can 
 be no unity to either thought or action which is 
 worthy of being considered of the personal type. 
 Memory that is capable of being explained by 
 the passive processes of association, however 
 elaborate, can never give to a conscious life the 
 unity characteristic of a Self. For such an 
 achievement recognition and self-appropriation 
 are essential. A certain kind of recognition is 
 manifest in much of the behavior of all the more 
 intelligent of the animals. The dog recognizes 
 his master and the meaning of his master's mood, 
 according to the cast of his master's countenance 
 [56] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 at the time, or the gesture of his arm or leg. 
 Whether the animal has the distinctly conscious 
 experiences which man has when deliberating to 
 solve his doubt, and then emerging into a state 
 of feeling sure about facts in a more or less 
 distant past, is a more difficult problem in the 
 psychology of animal life. But the distinctive 
 thing in man's memory, the thing which makes 
 it a powerful factor and an essential activity in 
 unifying the Self, is the fact that man is capable 
 of attributing the present experience to the self- 
 same Self whose was the past experience; and of 
 feeling sure of the truth of such an act of attrib- 
 uting. I did this, or suffered that, in the past; 
 it is the selfsame "I" who now achieves the act 
 of remembering. "I was; I am; I know that the 
 I who now am is the selfsame I that then was." 
 Any act of deliberately remembering, however 
 entangled in elusive and puzzling associations, 
 when it becomes clear, can be resolved into 
 factors that are uniquely personal, and so inca- 
 pable of being explained by the theory of a will 
 subjected to the dominance of passive associa- 
 tions. The conception of a Self as having some 
 kind of identity; the abstract conception of time 
 as having some sort of continuity and reality; 
 the power to which psychology gives the name 
 seZf-consciousness and about the real nature of 
 which it has often of late debated so clamorously, 
 and so foolishly; and above all, that activity of 
 a self-appropriating will; — all these and other 
 
 [57] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 personal characteristics are involved, however 
 obscurely and weakly, in every act of recognitive 
 memory. 
 
 It is the power of self-control, however, in which 
 resides the citadel of personal life and personal 
 development; and it is the doctrine of self-control 
 which furnishes, so far as its possession is possible 
 by finite intellects, the secret of personality. 
 These and. similar statements are secondary and 
 dependent on the belief that the veritable Centre 
 of Personality is the Will. Ever since Schopen- 
 hauer, the current views of human nature, from 
 the different points of view, have been emphasiz- 
 ing the will that is in man and in the Universe, 
 rather to the prejudice or neglect of the more 
 strictly intellectual capacities and activities. 
 "The heart of the heart," said Joannes Miiller, 
 speaking from the theologian's point of view, 
 "is the will." "In the will," says Wundt, 
 speaking from the psychological point of view, 
 "the Subject apprehends in an immediate way 
 its peculiar manner of life and action." 
 
 But what kind of a wUl can serve as a centre 
 for the development of personal life in man; and 
 what conception are we entitled to form of The 
 Will on which, if we personify the Universe as 
 our personal nature compels us to do, we must 
 conceive that the constitution and ongoing life 
 of the Universe depend.? In the various kinds 
 and grades of animal life — and we might even 
 say without fear of being convicted of absurdity, 
 
 [58] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 in the various species of plants and in the atoms, 
 as judged by their specific peculiarities of behavior 
 — we discover an almost infinite variety of wills. 
 In man's case, too, we seem compelled to recognize 
 in every individual various kinds and degrees of 
 will. In the first edition of his "A Text-Book of 
 Physiology" the English author. Dr. M. Foster, 
 declares: "In simpler and less exact language, 
 such a mass of protoplasm as an amoeba, though 
 susceptible in the highest degree to influences 
 from without, has a will of its own." And the 
 reason assigned for this conclusion runs as follows : 
 "It executes movements which cannot be ex- 
 plained by reference to any changes in surround- 
 ing circumstances at the time being." Such 
 changes are called "automatic"; and the inner 
 source of their origin is called "automatic will." 
 This property of automatism, the same authority 
 defines as "the power of initiating disturbances 
 or vital impulses, independent of any immediate 
 event or stimulus from without"; and he adds 
 that "it is one of the fundamental properties of 
 protoplasm." If we leave out the words "vital 
 impulses" and limit our conception of automatic 
 will to the initiation of changes which consist in 
 the executing of movements that cannot be 
 wJiolly explained by any influences in the en- 
 vironment at the time being, it would be quite 
 justifiable to say that every species of atom has 
 an automatic will; and that the character of 
 this will is always necessary to be considered in 
 
 [59] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 explaining its behavior under the continuously 
 changing conditions of its environment, that is, 
 the so-called "character" of the doings of the 
 atom. 
 
 In man's case we recognize both these kinds of 
 automatic will; both that which executes move- 
 ments that are purposeful but for the explanation 
 of which there is no need of any consciousness 
 of their purposefulness; and also those changes 
 that may be referred to conscious impulses. But 
 even the latter are by no means always, or even 
 habitually, regulated by conscious choice. For 
 every automatic activity, every deed of will 
 which does not rise above the level of a compli- 
 cated vital automatism, in order to explain it 
 fully it is necessary to understand the nature of 
 the particular autos in which the deed of will 
 originates. Now man's autos, or Self, is capable 
 of choice; and choice is the highest expression 
 of the will that is in man, of the Will that is the 
 centre of his personality. But choice is not 
 possible for blind will, or for a merely automatic 
 will, — at least not in the form in which men 
 do actually choose. On the contrary, personal 
 will responds to ideas and motives, whole classes 
 of which range above the utmost stretch of ca- 
 pacity reached by the most notable developments 
 of a merely animal life. The superior imagina- 
 tion and reasoning powers of man allure and 
 enable him to form ideals of various kinds; — 
 that is, ideas of conditions and achievements that 
 
 [60] 
 
THE CENTRE OF PERSONALITY 
 
 lie beyond anything already presented by ex- 
 perience of what is actual. These ideals of truth, 
 beauty, and goodness inspire the will to choices 
 that have their realization in view. And when 
 such choices become habitual, the "will to live" 
 becomes the will, not simply to live, but to live 
 worthily and well. 
 
 It is therefore in Character, or that kind of the 
 unification of personal capacities and activities 
 which is firmly settled on its basis in the Will, 
 when self-disciplined in the habitual and regard- 
 ful choice of rational and moral ideals, that one 
 must discover, to reverence, the highest type of 
 personality. If we can clearly discern the con- 
 ditions, laws of the evolution, the values, and the 
 probable destiny, of such a character, we may 
 hope the better to understand the secret of per- 
 sonality, whether we can explain it, or not, in 
 terms of the mechanism of the physical, psycho- 
 physical, and psychological sciences. 
 
 [61] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 N that parable which, above all others, 
 figures in the most persuasive way the pro- 
 foundest change possible in the attitude of 
 a human will toward the Will of the Universe, we 
 read: "But when he came to himself he said, 
 . . . I will arise and go to my father." To arrive 
 at such self-knowledge, and to choose such a 
 line of conduct, as is attributed in this parable 
 to the penitent "prodigal son," implies a practi- 
 cal solution of the problem of the secret of per- 
 sonality. As to his origin, the human person 
 finds it in a divine personality; as to his nature, 
 it is that of a wandering and disloyal or a re- 
 turned and obedient son; as to his development 
 and destiny, these are to be realized in their 
 ideal form by the perfection in knowledge and 
 service of the divine father by his son. Accord- 
 ing to this view, then, the most nearly complete 
 and final answer to the question. What is it 
 to be a person? must be found in the realm of 
 personal relations. Every human person has 
 within him at least the "potentiality" — to 
 adopt from the Aristotelian metaphysics a con- 
 venient word — of recognizing his true relations to 
 [62] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 the Divine Person, and by an act of will adapting 
 himself to those relations. Such an act of will 
 may fitly be called a "coming to one's Self" in 
 the highest meaning of the words. 
 
 The instances of a human person coming to 
 himself with sudden and sun-clear self-conscious- 
 ness, and then acting in view of the self-knowledge 
 gained in this way, with full promptitude and 
 firmness of decision, are comparatively rare in 
 the available records of human religious experi- 
 ence. But they are numerous enough to prove its 
 possibility. In his " Confessions " Augustine tells 
 us how he came to himself in no less notable 
 fashion than that narrated of the prodigal son in 
 the parable. In his youth he had made the 
 acquaintance of his baser bodily Self by drinking 
 freely "the cup of sensual pleasure." But even 
 at this stage of the "coming" he had learned 
 enough of another self to awaken the prayer 
 which he tells us arose in his heart: "Lord, give 
 me chastity and temperance, but not now." 
 He had been for some time coming to his intel- 
 lectual self under Manichean influences, through 
 the attractions of Neo-platonism and the un- 
 bounded enthusiasm which this idealistic philos- 
 ophy awakened in him; and by his induction 
 into Christian doctrine under the preaching of 
 Ambrose of Milan. But he had not yet adjusted 
 his will to the Will of the Universe; he had not 
 yet determined: "I will arise and go to the 
 father." This coming to himself took place when, 
 
 [63] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 overcome with conflicting emotions, he had fled 
 to the garden and thrown himself in tears down 
 under a fig tree; had heard the voice of a child 
 from a neighboring house repeating over and 
 over the words Tolle, lege, "Take up and read"; 
 and had picked up from the ground a copy of 
 Paul's Epistles and opened upon the sentence: 
 "Let us walk honestly as in the day." To walk 
 honestly as in the day is to follow the road 
 which leads the individual man to the discovery 
 and appropriation of the treasures of his own 
 personality. 
 
 It would be a mistake, however, to assume 
 that the recognition of the truth that man comes 
 to his truest and highest Self only by an intelligent 
 and cordial adjustment of his will to a higher and 
 Divine Will, or — to use more definitively the 
 language of religious experience — by taking the 
 attitude of loyal son toward God as his heavenly 
 Father, has ever been confined to any one type 
 of religious doctrine or religious experience. 
 This voluntary attitude of reverence and fidehty 
 toward "Heaven" as the divine Source of all 
 good and the just Ruler over the affairs of men, 
 individual or social, has long and widely been 
 deemed the prerequisite of all prosperity and 
 righteousness for the personality of man. Only 
 as this secret was discovered and its admonitions 
 acted upon after its prophetic voices had been 
 heard and taken to heart, could individuals or 
 nations flourish or become strong and great, 
 
 [64] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 Dr. Martin is undoubtedly in the right, when he 
 aflfirms that Confucius ascribed to Heaven, the 
 object of his reverence, more of personaUty than 
 his followers of today are willing to admit. In 
 a more private way did the greatest of all the 
 monarchs of ancient Egypt, Rameses II, when in 
 sore distress avow the same unshaken belief: 
 "Who, then, art thou, O my father Amon! 
 Doth a father forget his son? Surely a wretched 
 lot awaiteth him who opposes thy will; but blessed 
 is he who knoweth thee, for thy deeds proceed 
 from a heart full of love." And the lame slave 
 Epictetus, the prince of all the ancient Stoics 
 but a true Christian in his reflective thinking 
 and in his mode of life, exhorted himself and 
 others without ceasing: "Dare to look up to 
 God and say, 'Make use of me for the future as 
 thou wilt.' I am of the same mind. I am one 
 with thee." 
 
 It is not, however, of this supremely significant 
 and valuable form of the coming to one's Self 
 that it is proposed to treat at the present time. 
 We must begin much lower down in the develop- 
 ment of the capacities and activities belonging, 
 as essentials, to all human personal life, if we 
 would lay foundations for the disclosing of its 
 secrets, so far as they may be revealed by appeal 
 to facts of universal experience and to the more 
 primary observations of descriptive psychology. 
 In order to attain any degree or type of the 
 individuality belonging to every normally devel- 
 
 [65] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 oped person, various processes of coming to one's 
 self must be successfully passed through. The 
 coming to itseK of a first-rate Self must be pre- 
 ceded by the formation of a selfhood involving, 
 in however great or small degree, the capacities 
 and activities common to all normal members 
 of the human race. The heights of personality 
 can be achieved only by the painful climbing of 
 the base. That is not first, either in time or in 
 logical order, which is spiritual, but that which 
 is psychical and natural. This truth is empha- 
 sized by, is indeed embodied in, the very word 
 which religion employs — too often without under- 
 standing aright its profound meaning — the word 
 "super-natural." 
 
 There are three forms of the coming to one's 
 self, different but not distinct, which lay the 
 foundations for the higher developments of the 
 personal life in man. These may be called 
 the Self bodily, the Self sexual, and the Self 
 social. 
 
 The first task given to the human infant to do, 
 under the influence of association, habits of 
 ideation, natural instincts, and more clearly 
 conscious impulses accompanied or followed by 
 the reward of pleasure or the punishment of 
 pain, is the formation of his very own bodUy 
 Self. We have already seen that to call the in- 
 dividual human being "somebody," or even to 
 deny that he is "anybody" of consequence, and 
 not less, contemptuously to call him a "nobody," 
 
 [66] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 is to associate the development and inherited 
 quaUties of the physical organism in an essential 
 way with the personal life. Every human per- 
 sonality is a Body. Not only this: every human 
 personality is somebody in particular, and must 
 be self-distinguished in space and time from every 
 other body. And, indeed, how could I count 
 for any particular person in my own esteem, or 
 in that of my feUows, unless I distinguish myself, 
 and am distinguished by them, as a separate 
 material existence in time and space. To have 
 been there and then, or to be here and now, is 
 inconceivable without coming to a bodily Self, 
 for a being who is to take his place and play his 
 part, however insignificant and whether for good 
 or for evil, in a world of men. 
 
 To get a knowledge and possession of his own 
 particular bodily self is the marvellously intri- 
 cate and difficult task set from the very first 
 for achievement by the infant's mind and will. 
 Modern psychology, after discountenancing as 
 far as possible the mystery of the process, has 
 occupied itself diligently with attempts to describe 
 and explain the different elements and stages of 
 this achievement. But it has never solved this 
 most abstruse, and therefore most entrancing 
 of its problems. And it never will solve it until 
 some person can combine the power of insight 
 and analysis of the genius in psychology and 
 philosophy with the quite undeveloped con- 
 sciousness of the babe. Such a combination is, 
 
 [67] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 of course, impossible for a human mind. The 
 truth is that however we may imagine 
 
 "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," 
 
 the plain fact is, the rather, 
 
 "Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 Upon the growing boy." 
 
 So far as the unprejudiced study of the signs 
 informs us — and what trustworthy evidence be- 
 sides such signs have we for interpreting the 
 nature of any thing, or, still more, the conscious 
 experiences of any form of life, or most of all, 
 the kind of Life, personal or otherwise, which is 
 manifested, as we say, in the Universe? — so far 
 as the signs inform us, the dog who runs ahead 
 or follows barking at the heels of his master, has 
 feelings and mental images far more like those 
 of the man than has the infant given to his father- 
 hood a few hours before. The grown dog is 
 more of a Self than the puppy man. But the 
 human infant has the "potentiality" of knowl- 
 edge and control of its bodily Self which will 
 shortly carry it far beyond anything possible 
 for a merely animal mind and will. The dog can 
 never become a body, self-distinguished and dis- 
 tinguished by others as a particular and lone 
 example of the human personal type. 
 
 We cannot enter into the detailed description 
 of the process by which, so far as its study can 
 solve the mystery, the human infant comes into 
 the possession and control of its bodily self. A 
 brief survey, subject to doubt at many points 
 
 [68] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 and to constant revision, must suffice. It would 
 seem that in this work of "bi-partition," or dis- 
 tinction between body and soul as they are, 
 however, in reality combined to constitute the 
 complete person, "the total melange of bodily 
 feelings or sensations that are ill-localized, con- 
 fused or mixed" — takes an important part. It 
 forms a sort of background or platform of con- 
 sciousness on which the particular objects of 
 sense-presentation define themselves. Nor is it 
 in the earlier stages alone of the development of 
 self-knowledge that the somewhat vague concep- 
 tion of ourselves as a remembered and familiar 
 complex of bodily feelings is prominent. With 
 the child who has attained any vivid notion of 
 his selfhood, it is the feeling of a moving body 
 that represents the self; and his most abstract 
 conception of his own being does not go far 
 beyond vague generahzations, warm with emo- 
 tion, upon the basis of bodily experiences. If 
 this earliest form of the representation of the 
 Ego could speak, and could use the abstract 
 language of philosophy, it would announce itself 
 thus: "What is here and now, that am I." In 
 this regard the child would agree with the 
 philosopher whenever the latter tries to realize 
 his highest conception of the self. But with the 
 child, what is here and now, — "that which am 
 I," — is chiefly what it can see or put its hand 
 upon, of its own body; or what it feels within 
 its own thoracic or abdominal cavities. 
 
 [69] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The author once pressed a bright little girl of 
 five years old to tell him what she meant by the 
 "I" that "loved papa"; in the last analysis 
 the solution of the puzzle was announced in the 
 following sentence: "Oh, now I know; it is my 
 arms, because I hug him with them; and my 
 lips, because I kiss him with them." But do we 
 not find the Apostle shrinking back from the 
 vague and shadowy conception of an "unclothed" 
 or disembodied Ego? Indeed, the literature of 
 many peoples, as, for example, of the ancient 
 Hebrews, raises the question whether they had, 
 in general, reached the conception of a soul as 
 separable from a sentient bodily organism." ^ 
 
 The conditions of heredity, environment, and of 
 training under the influence of social surroundings, 
 according to varying capacities and aptitudes, 
 make certain an endless variety of individual 
 selves, no one of which is in all particulars 
 precisely like any other. These do not suflSce, 
 however, unless they are apprehended and ap- 
 propriated by the individual, to constitute him 
 a separate bodily Self. Every one must learn 
 by trial of his own particular capacities and 
 aptitudes, and by gaining at least some measure 
 of control over them. 
 
 The conscious testing of his bodily powers, 
 and the discovery of the results of automatic 
 and impulsive will, furnishes a growing wealth 
 
 'Quoted from the author's "Psychology, Descriptive and Ex- 
 planatory," p. 526 f. 
 
 [70] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 of material for every individual to know, more 
 fully and in detail, what particular sort of a 
 body he is, and what things he can do, what 
 things not do, with it. A necessary and highly 
 valuable portion of this experience is gained by 
 matching himself against other bodies, not only 
 those of inanimate things, or of animals, but 
 also, and not least important, of his fellow men. 
 The individual cooperates with others in common 
 tasks, or struggles against them in friendly or 
 deadly rivalry. All the while his temperament, 
 or disposition, whether the subject be aware of 
 it or not, is exercising a determining influence 
 upon the process of coming to one's bodily self. 
 In this way one person may be induced to make 
 for himself "somebody" of a leader or a bully; 
 another may let himself become an unambitious 
 and despondent "nobody." A naturally choleric 
 temperament, and an ardent, grasping, or aspir- 
 ing disposition, when cherished or cultivated by 
 habitual deeds tmtil habits of will give fixedness 
 of character, makes a very different body from 
 that formed by the opposite of these natural 
 characteristics and acquired habits. Nor can 
 the influence of health and of sanitary surround- 
 ings be left out of the complete account. 
 
 How true something of all this is of the dif- 
 ferent species of animals, Epictetus reminds us 
 in an amusing passage which, like all this philos- 
 opher says, was intended to bear upon the moral 
 training of the personal life in man. In a Dis- 
 
 [71] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 course which bears the title, "In What Manner 
 and upon Every Occasion to Preserve our Char- 
 acter," he emphasizes the importance for up- 
 holding his personal dignity, of a philosopher's 
 refusal to cut off his beard. For Domitian had 
 ordered all philosophers to be banished. To 
 avoid this inconvenience, those who wished to 
 disguise their profession had their beards removed. 
 But when Epictetus was asked what he intended 
 to do about complying with this order, he re- 
 plied: "Whence does the bull, when the lion 
 approaches, alone recognize his own qualifications, 
 and expose himself alone for the whole herd? 
 It is evident that with the qualifications occurs, 
 at the same time, the consciousness of being 
 indued with them. But neither is a bull nor a 
 gallant-spirited man formed all at once. We 
 are to exercise, and qualify ourselves, and not to 
 run rashly upon what doth not concern us." 
 
 All such exercise as that recommended by the 
 ancient Stoic, and illustrated by such a process 
 of "coming to itself" as is possible even for an 
 animal, depends upon the formation of habits of 
 wUl. And it is toward the formation of habits 
 of will that the training of the bodily Self in man 
 is directed. When we speak of training we refer 
 to something of much wider import than the 
 special training given to the professional or 
 amateur athlete. Nor do we refer solely to such 
 universally desirable exercise as is demanded for 
 the personal life in order to secure for every 
 
 [72] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 individual human being the requisite mens sana 
 in corf ore sano. Our reference is much broader 
 than that implied in the attainment of either of 
 these, however desirable, ends. It implies the 
 truth that the "coming to one's self" of every 
 individual Self requires a quite special and highly 
 individualized culture of each one's particular 
 aptitudes, capacities, and opportunities, both of 
 body and of mind as dependently related to the 
 body. 
 
 Among the proverbs of "the wise man" it is 
 written: "Train up a chUd in the way (the 
 trade, handicraft, business, or profession) it is 
 designed that it should follow; and then when it 
 has aged, it wUl not desert or willingly take itself 
 out of that particular way." And, indeed, so em- 
 bodied will this way have become in the personal 
 feelings, ideas, and practical activities of the Self, 
 that its disembodiment will be diflBcult if not 
 quite impossible. Never quite impossible; for the 
 will "to break the cake of custom" is essential to 
 the continuous life of a genuine personality. 
 
 This conclusion might be enforced at length by 
 a study of the psychology of man's physical 
 organism, and of the manner in which this 
 organism reacts to excite those feelings, ideas, 
 and deeds of will on which the conception of 
 the bodily self so largely depends. The superi- 
 ority of man over the other animals, and his 
 ability to lay the foundations of civilization, are 
 largely the result of the desire and the capacity 
 
 [73] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 to design and make, improve and employ, an 
 endless variety of weapons of defence and attack, 
 and of use for the supply of his needs; but also 
 for the expression and gratification of his ideals 
 of utility, comfort, beauty, and religion. But 
 the particular character of the bodily self depends 
 to an hitherto not sufficiently analyzed extent on 
 the character of the implement which the in- 
 dividual habitually employs in the accomplish- 
 ment of his daily tasks. The sensations which 
 have been called "the double feeling of contact" 
 — "a beneficent sensory illusion" — enlarge the 
 bodily self in ways that accord with the imple- 
 ments employed. The man for the time being 
 feels and acts as though his tool were a part of 
 that self. It is not possible for the person who 
 uses constantly the pen to feel as does the man 
 whose daily implement is a plough, a hammer, 
 or a sword. The man who sits at the desk, or 
 tends a swiftly running machine from a bench, 
 cannot feel his legs and back and diaphragm, and 
 the contents of his thoracic and abdominal 
 cavities, as does the man who habitually walks 
 the deck of a ship in all kinds of weather, or 
 handles the huge masses of molten iron in a 
 modern rolling mill. The same boy John will 
 not easily become the same bodily self of a man, 
 quite irrespective of whether he is brought up 
 as John the tailor, John the salesman m a ladies' 
 furnishing store, or John the carpenter, or John 
 of the smithy. 
 [74] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 Even the secondary feelings which depend 
 upon the styles of dressing one's self, or still 
 more potently upon going mostly naked or not 
 dressing at all, are of no mean significance in the 
 same direction. The psychology of this subject 
 has been treated at some length in Lotze's 
 " Microcosmus, " with his customary mixture of 
 psychological insight and refined humor. Here 
 he calls attention to the universal custom of 
 devising garments and forms of adornment that 
 tend notably to increase the feeling of height. 
 These vary all the way from feathers, and helmets 
 and bearskin hats, to lofty coiffures and high- 
 heeled shoes. The boy feels his bodily self 
 exalted when he mounts a pair of stilts. Other 
 forms of clothing extend the feeling of the bodily 
 seK in all directions, and thus increase the feeling 
 of freedom as well. Such is the effect of waving 
 drapery, of wavy clusters of curls, and other 
 appendages that flutter in the air. In the same 
 class are placed the mussel-shells, glass beads, or 
 strings of bits of bone, with which the Indian 
 squaw adorns herself; and the sash-ends, light 
 laces, and waving veils of her more civilized 
 sister. Still another kind of accoutrements helps 
 literally to "bolster up" the sense of firmness, 
 of self-control, and of high resolve. Girdles and 
 corsets and bracelets, and other devices for 
 blading the muscles and soft parts of the body 
 tightly, belong to this class; and to it is referred 
 the "feeling of the boy's pride in the manly 
 
 [75] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 vigor of his existence" as he fastens by braces 
 or belt his first pair of trousers, — the substitute 
 for the suit of armor to which, perhaps, he aspires 
 when he shall have attained the strength of a 
 man. 
 
 In leaving this consideration of the lower 
 levels along which every individual man moves 
 toward the acquirement for his soul of a bodily 
 self peculiarly his own, I will quote with some- 
 thing of the same spirit of banter the sentences 
 with which Lotze dismisses this part of his dis- 
 cussion of the laws of "human sentience." "After 
 having by the laying down of these three funda- 
 mental laws performed for the exact science of 
 dress the same service as Kepler for astronomy, 
 I make over to others the further scientific profit 
 therefrom accruing, and turn to the examination 
 of several phenomena in which the same ten- 
 dency here observed to alter with sesthetic 
 wilfulness directly given relations of Nature 
 and enhance their value, is exhibited in a graver 
 form. In all actions, from the simple movement 
 of the body up to complicated social arrange- 
 ments, is shown the disposition to put in the 
 place of the natural course of events a ceremo- 
 nious order having its origin solely in the will of 
 the subject and yet claiming to regulate them 
 as they must be." 
 
 The coming to one's Self as "somebody" is, 
 however, by no means sufficient for the forma- 
 tion and development of the highest type of 
 
 [76] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 personality; or even for laying the foundation 
 in the bodily functions for such a type. For 
 this conclusion, among other reasons, the follow- 
 ing may serve the present purpose. And first: 
 It is not inclusive enough. The person is some- 
 thing more than animated body, no matter how 
 well adapted and trained to its control over 
 its own domain. Man's bodily self is more than 
 mere body. It is more than animated body; 
 it is more than embodied soul. It must be a 
 physical organism, adapted by nature and trained 
 by exercise, to express and set into reality in an 
 environment of human society the functions and 
 relations of a full-orbed personal life. There- 
 fore, such a coming to oneself as has already been 
 described, must be completed by a response on 
 the part of the body to the higher sesthetical, 
 moral, and religious sentiments and ideas. In 
 its completed form, this is what Christianity, 
 chiefly but not alone among the religions, has 
 with a truly audacious metaphor called "making 
 the body a temple for the indwelling of the 
 Spirit of God." Adumbrations of this truly 
 natural demand have been everywhere through all 
 the ages the characteristic source of the requisi- 
 tion of all manner of washings and ceremonial 
 ablutions required of the worshipper before he 
 appears in the more immediate presence of the 
 gods; and, as well, of the offerings which he 
 proposes as likely to propitiate them. 
 
 A yet more obvious deficiency of the physical 
 
 [77] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 organism as an embodiment of the complete 
 personal life is its instability. In its normal 
 condition it is sensitive to changes of climate, 
 diet, conditions of atmospheric moisture and 
 electricity, and slight local irritations. More 
 notable is the truth, when temporary changes in 
 the bodily self are produced by alcohol, opium, and 
 other drugs, and by such abnormal states as 
 accompany hypnosis, hysteria, somnambulism, 
 and other similar forms of a dissociated and 
 disturbed personality. In certain kinds of in- 
 sanity, and in the most severe cases of chronic 
 "double or triple personality," so-called, the bodily 
 self seems profoundly affected or even quite 
 overcome. "Go," said the drunken cobbler of 
 Liege, when he awoke from his sleep to find him- 
 self bathed, shaved, aflBicted with tonsure, and 
 couched in a cell surrounded by brother monks 
 who presented their . compliments and inquired 
 eagerly after his restoration to health, — "Go to 
 the foot of the bridge and see if Gilles the cobbler 
 is in his shop; if he is not, I am he; but if he is, 
 may the devil get me, if I know who I am." 
 Among men of savage tribes, the fear of having 
 the name of the individua tampered with, or 
 his photograph taken, lest some important thing 
 may be lost from the essentials of the self, gives 
 added evidence of the same instability of this 
 lower conception of the nature of personality. 
 
 Many other evidences might be brought for- 
 ward to show that it is only when the character 
 
 [78] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 of a thinking and willing being under the influence 
 of moral and social ideas has been, in fact, estab- 
 lished, and when the Self knows itself as differ- 
 enced in this way from all external things and 
 from other selves, has the question, What really 
 is it to be a person? received its answer in the case 
 of any individual human being. 
 
 Under closely similar influences, and in not 
 unlike manner, every normal individual member 
 of the human race comes to what we have 
 ventured to call "the sexual Self." In calling 
 attention to this fact, and in emphasizing its im- 
 portance for the higher developments of personal 
 character which repose upon this fact, it is not 
 necessary to spread out in detail the physical 
 and mental differences that always and every- 
 where exist between man and woman, when each 
 has reached some good degree of maturity; or 
 to argue that there are absolutely no exceptions 
 to the general rule. Undoubtedly, there are in 
 our modern and supposedly refined civilization, 
 masculine women and men who deserve to be 
 called of marked feminine type, both of body 
 and of mind. Undoubtedly, also, there may 
 always and everywhere be discovered women 
 whose physical and mental characteristics equal 
 or surpass those of many men belonging to the 
 same personal type. But about the general facts, 
 and about their importance for the development 
 of the infinite variations of personal life, there 
 can be no doubt. In general, the centre of 
 
 [79] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 gravity of the physical organism, the develop- 
 ment and distribution of the muscular weight, 
 the size and strength of the bones, the mathe- 
 matical proportion of the nervous system and 
 especially of the brain to the other bodily parts, 
 the rate of respiration and circulation, and per- 
 haps the very constitution of the blood, as well 
 as the organs whose function is in some sort 
 known to all adults, difference the sexes in the 
 human race. Thus, in general it may be said 
 that every adult male comes to himself as some 
 sort of man; while every adult female comes to 
 herself as some sort of a woman. The sort of a 
 man is one; the sort of a woman is another, — ■ 
 when we are talking about the endless variety 
 of personalities. 
 
 Nor does this process of differencing the sexes 
 in respect of the type of personality that is form- 
 ing wait for the age of adolescence. Even at 
 birth a difference of dispositions is provable. 
 This difference is emphasized all through child- 
 hood and youth by differences in play and in 
 work, in dress, in personal treatment, and a host 
 of other associative influences. Among the lowest 
 savages, such a process of differentiation is rec- 
 ognized as appropriate, and is, more often than 
 not, over-emphasized rather than underestimated. 
 In more highly cultured circles these sexual 
 differences are largely made to serve as the whole 
 basis of social as well as family life. Even in 
 the Old Japan, and now in country places, where 
 
 C8o: 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 many of the standards of correct living are 
 notably high and others seem to us lamentably 
 low, in the warm weather little boys may go 
 naked but little girls must not. 
 
 Nor does this coming to a knowledge of the self 
 sexual, on the part of the individual, wait alto- 
 gether upon the time when the boy or girl begins, 
 however imperfectly, to understand something 
 of its subtler meaning. The very habits of asso- 
 ciation and action which enforce attention to 
 the differences arouse a consciousness that be- 
 gins profoundly to affect the process of coming 
 to oneself. And when the rapid physical changes, 
 and profound disturbance of emotion or finer stir- 
 rings of sentiment, and awakening of ideas, which 
 are characteristic of the age of adolescence, are 
 matters of experience, this process is greatly 
 accelerated. It culminates in the pairing of the 
 sexes and in the begetting and bearing of children. 
 It thus contributes the most powerful of influ- 
 ences to the coming to the Self social, and to the 
 shaping of all man's artistic, moral, and religious 
 ideas. 
 
 Theoretical psychology and philosophy have 
 long debated the question whether a being that 
 had the native capacity (or "potentiality") of 
 personality could become a genuine person, so to 
 say, without the influences of education in a 
 social environment. Could a human infant left 
 alone, and reared apart from all social contact 
 with its fellows, ever initiate and develop any 
 
 [81] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 kind of personality worthy of the name? Wholly 
 by oneself, and unaided by other like selves, 
 can the individual of the human species attain 
 the specific personal traits of the species to which 
 he properly belongs? Romulus and Remus, 
 abandoned in infancy and suckled by a she-wolf, 
 became founders of Rome. But this is myth; 
 and they were sons of Mars. Nor does the myth 
 dare to go so far as to make its heroes become 
 such in the companionship of wolves alone. 
 For the king's herdsman took them home to his 
 wife Laurentia, by whom they were carefully 
 nursed. And "the two youths grew up, em- 
 ployed in the labors, the sports, and the perils 
 of the pastoral occupation of their foster-father." 
 But "their blood could not be quite concealed." 
 And their superior mien, courage, and abilities 
 soon acquired for them a decided superiority 
 over their young compeers, and they became 
 leaders of the youthful herdsmen in their con- 
 tests with robbers or with rivals." "Blood will 
 tell;" but blood alone, and left to itself in a 
 purely natural environment, will not suffice to 
 enable the sons of a god to come to themselves 
 even as herdsmen. For this there must be prac- 
 tical application of the maxim: "Train up the 
 child in the way he is to go;" and then he will 
 be somebody among other bodies of his own 
 kind, after the human, which is essentially the 
 personal, type. 
 
 The problem which has just been raised does 
 
 [82] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 not easily admit of an experimental and strictly 
 scientific solution. There have been wild men, 
 or boys abandoned early and left to grow up 
 apart from civilizing influences, and surrounded 
 by only such incitements as plants and animals 
 could afford, who have been captured and sub- 
 jected under what science appreciates highly — 
 namely, conditions of control — to observation of 
 the effect upon them of an improved and 
 definitely social environment. In these cases, 
 however we dispute over the kind and degree of 
 development they have reached without the ac- 
 quirement of language and other means of social 
 intercourse with men, we find in these "wild" 
 ones a mental capacity, and social instincts, 
 which difference them distinctly from anything 
 found in animal life. These unfortunate human 
 beings can be humanized; they may be trained 
 to develop a social self of the human personal 
 type. In those cases of double personality, 
 where one of the secondary selves comes into 
 existence with the traits of an infant, or even of 
 an idiot, the same thing is quite invariably true. 
 The seeming infant or idiot is by no means, in all 
 respects, really infantile or idiotic. There may be 
 aroused in the secondary personality the emo- 
 tional stirrings, the impulses, and aspirations, 
 and the mental activities, that belong to a human 
 personal life. Or if this cannot be done, the 
 imperfect personality can generally be eliminated 
 by judicious medical and psychical treatment; 
 
 [83] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 and thus the cure of dissociated personality is 
 effected and the patient restored to the unity 
 required for the integrity of the personal life. 
 
 But every normal human being, irrespective 
 of its bodily peculiarities and of sex, under all 
 kinds and degrees of its social environment, but 
 solicited, compelled, and guided by this environ- 
 ment, comes to conformity with some type of a 
 Social Self. The general features of that type 
 are, indeed, provided by the kind of society into 
 which the individual is born and in which he is 
 brought up. He must work with others, share 
 in their sports, and take his part in their contests, 
 whether domestic, inter-tribal, or inter-national. 
 To a certain large extent, the forming of his mental 
 associations, the direction of his sense-percep- 
 tions, his emotions, superstitions, ideas of moral 
 value and corresponding deeds of will, and all 
 the activities of his sesthetical, moral, and reli- 
 gious consciousness, must conform to the pre- 
 vailing social type. According to the character 
 and stage of social development, into a certain 
 number and ranking of which the so-called 
 science of sociology, or " societology," in a rather 
 arbitrary way, divides up human history and the 
 various races of men, the individual man comes 
 to his Social Self. But these relatively external 
 influences never quite dominate the process 
 completely. They are prevented from this by 
 the individuality belonging to the bodily self; 
 and they cannot wholly overcome the inherent 
 
 [84] 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 differences which characterize the self sexual. 
 Not every boy can be made a mighty hunter or 
 warrior or leader of men, whether by savage or 
 mediaeval religious training, or by modern culture 
 or Kultur. No girl can be made into a man by 
 compelling her to work in the fields or in a factory, 
 or hiring her to hand baskets of coal up the sides 
 of a ship; or by donning a suit of armor to lead 
 men to battle after the style of Joan of Arc. Nor 
 is it the social environment which accounts for 
 poets, artists, reformers of morals, inspired proph- 
 ets, or great teachers of religion or discoverers 
 in science, in a wholly exclusive way. The 
 individual personal will, with its mystery of 
 personal choice, and a special endowment of imag- 
 ination, sentiment and ability to form and to 
 appreciate ideas of value, must be admitted into 
 the account of the formation of such selves as 
 these. And, indeed, differences, whether inher- 
 ited or acquired, which culminate in different 
 habits of will must be recognized in the coming 
 of every individual to his social self. 
 
 It is often claimed that savages have a much 
 inferior development of individuality in the social 
 self; and it is assumed that the reason for this 
 is to be found in the low grade of their social 
 development. Both the claim and the assump- 
 tion are doubtful, however. But anthropology 
 is not acquainted with any savage tribe that is 
 not already gifted with all the essential requisites 
 for developing a high type of the social self, in 
 
 [85] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 every one of the most characteristic features of 
 human personality. If religion of the pure and 
 redemptive sort can once get hold of them, — and 
 here is the difficulty, a difficulty often chiefly due 
 to the conspicuous inconsistencies of the teachers 
 of such a professed religion, — and then educa- 
 tion come to its aid, the way is opened to the 
 actual production of a percentage of the higher 
 type which shall compare favorably with that 
 produced by the most favored nations.^ 
 
 The Coming to Oneself in all these three 
 closely dependent ways — the self bodily, the 
 self sexual, and the self social — is absolutely 
 essential for being anybody among others, a 
 Self of some sort in relation with other selves of 
 
 ' Some years ago a pupil of mine who had roamed among the 
 most unfrequented and savage of the South Sea Islands, translated 
 a book of the Odyssey into the language of one of them, and read 
 it before an assembly of its chiefs and their followers. They greeted 
 the poem with more intelligence and enthusiastic appreciation 
 than that displayed by the average Freshman or Sophomore in 
 College, even when he reads the translation of his "pony," or listens 
 to the translation of his teacher. 
 
 An acquaintance of mine, who had been brought up from infancy 
 in the closest intimacy with the so-called "primitive men" of Aus- 
 tralia, and who was himself a member of the anthropological branch 
 of the British Association of Sciences, once said to me: "About 
 every matter for the knowledge of which their environment affords 
 them the means of gaining knowledge, I take off my hat to them 
 every time." A professor of anthropology in the University of 
 Cambridge, England, who was well acquainted with the primitive 
 men of the East Indies, did not hesitate to declare that he con- 
 sidered their powers of accurate observation and acuteness of in- 
 telligence distinctly superior to that of the lower classes in Great 
 Britain. 
 
COMING TO ONE'S SELF 
 
 the human kind. But this achievement, if it 
 can be called such, for it is largely passive and 
 enforced, although it has its centre in a personal 
 will, lays only foundations for a genuine personal 
 development. The conditions, nature, and stages 
 of personal development must, therefore, be 
 further studied before we can even see clearly 
 an approach to a recognition — not to say a 
 solution — of the secret of personality. 
 
 [87] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 DESCRIPTION of the different types 
 of coming to oneself, or rather dif- 
 ferent aspects of the one process, 
 does not by any means furnish an answer to our 
 question: What is it to be a person as every 
 normal human being is a person? Indeed, it 
 only forms a point of starting in a search for 
 the more complete answer. The self bodily, the 
 self sexual, and the self social, all combined, 
 afford only the raw material of genuine personal- 
 ity. Anybody who has reached only this stage 
 in the attainment of a truly personal life is a case 
 of arrested growth. It is necessary, then, to 
 inquire: What are the capacities which must be 
 further developed? What are the activities which 
 accomplish the development? and. What is the 
 result reached as the goal of development? 
 
 At the beginning of any study of the develop- 
 ment of personal life, however, it is supremely 
 desirable, as a guide to truth and a guard against 
 error, to keep three principles in mind. These 
 may be called in a provisional way: The prin- 
 ciple of continuity; the principle of cooperation 
 [88] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 or mutual dependence; and the principle of 
 individuality. 
 
 The life of every person is, at least theoretically 
 considered, subject to sharp crises, sudden and 
 seemingly profound changes in the currents 
 along which it is running and even in its under- 
 lying purposes; and, at times, to the pretty com- 
 plete upsetting of cherished plans and supposedly 
 fixed ideas and confirmed habits of action: and 
 in most cases, not merely theoretically so. For 
 they be few, and these by no means always the 
 best few, with whom the course of the personal 
 life runs altogether smoothly. On the contrary, 
 there is reason to believe that such complete 
 smoothness is not favorable to the development 
 of personality. Such facts do not, however, dis- 
 prove the principle of continuity or diminish the 
 extent and intensity of its importance in applica- 
 tion to the individual man. The way the crises 
 are met and improved or suffered; the voluntary 
 reception and repulse or adoption of the changes; 
 and the return to, or abandonment for something 
 better, of the disordered plans; — all these, and 
 all other experiences of the personal life, can 
 never in thought or in fact be separated from that 
 same life's history in the past. For the develop- 
 ment of personality is not as the appearance of 
 "shadow shapes that come and go"; it is all in 
 the direction of forming a character; and by the 
 word "character" we mean that kind of a will to 
 live the life of a person which has been formed by 
 
 [89] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 a continuous process of "stamping in" and 
 "stamping out" habits of choice that have ex- 
 pressed themselves in action. Even those cases 
 of moral or religious conversion, to which refer- 
 ence was made as examples of the most notable 
 forms of the coming to oneself cannot be exempted 
 from the principle of continuity. A disenthralled 
 Buddha is no other than Sakya-muni disen- 
 thralled. Ambrose's convert to Christianity, and 
 become the greatest of the Church Fathers, can- 
 not be understood as a person other than the 
 dissolute Augustine converted. Confucius the 
 practical philosopher can be appreciated only as 
 the Chinese youth of the same name whose mind 
 and will had been determined by the study of 
 his country's classics and his country's disregard, 
 in its actual economic and political life, of their 
 sacred injunctions. 
 
 With particular care, however, must we avoid 
 the psychological fallacy with which so-called 
 mental science was so long afflicted, and which 
 is still a sort of obsession, the deliverance from 
 which it is almost impossible to effect. There is 
 good reason for speaking of different faculties 
 of the human soul or mind. The old-fashioned 
 tripartite division of these faculties into those of 
 intellect, feeling, and will, is not without its 
 solid ground in all the facts of experience. But 
 psychology is not the only science which is con- 
 stantly tempted to make separate entities out 
 of the different elements and operations into 
 
 [90] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 which, for laudable purposes of more detailed 
 study and complete explanation, it has analyzed 
 the objects of its researches. Witness the use 
 constantly made by the chemical and physical 
 sciences of such terms as "energy" and "law"; 
 and, as well, the way that the economic and social 
 sciences employ terminology borrowed from biol- 
 ogy to describe phenomena which have little or 
 no real likeness to those observed in the genesis 
 and growth of plants and animals. It should 
 be clearly understood, then, that no so-called 
 faculty ever acts in independence of all the other 
 faculties; and that the growth of mental life and 
 the development of personality invariably implies 
 the activity and cooperation, the unceasing 
 action and reaction, of all the faculties. The 
 life of the mind, like the life of the body, proceeds 
 only with a constant readjustment of every one 
 of its capacities, and every one of its forms of 
 activity, to every other; and all to every form 
 of its environment. Circulation and respiration, 
 digestion and assimilation, muscular activity and 
 nervous impulses and cerebral processes, are 
 never for a moment independent of one another's 
 condition and functioning. But, since all these 
 functions are assignable more particularly to 
 certain parts of the physical organism, — the 
 whole organism being physical, and its parts 
 being physically separate — the unity of the 
 whole organism and the principle of action and 
 reaction need not always be kept before the mind. 
 
 [91] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The case of the mind, however, is very different. 
 The account of personal development must al- 
 ways respect the essential but pecuUar unity of 
 the personal hfe. Never, even for the moment, 
 must we speak of intellect, feeling, and will as 
 though they were independent forms of personal 
 life, or could by any possibility be developed 
 in independence of one another. Never, when 
 speaking of self-consciousness, or memory, or 
 reasoning or choice, or of any form of conscious 
 emotion or sentiment, must we forget, or dimin- 
 ish our implied recognition of, the unity of 
 the subject of all these faculties and their 
 corresponding states. 
 
 The individuality of the developed personal 
 life — its course in development and the character 
 attained — follows from the individuality, in- 
 herited and either passively acquired or adopted 
 by choice, of every human being. That nobody 
 is precisely like anybody else, and that every- 
 body possesses some sufficient claim to this 
 individuality, are thoughts which for the present 
 have been sufficiently enforced. We consider 
 now how the development of personal individ- 
 uality is dependent on personal will. 
 
 The development of personal life depends upon 
 growth in the knowledge of things; growth in 
 the knowledge of Self; growth in the knowledge 
 of the relations between things, and between 
 things and selves, and between selves; but espe- 
 cially upon growth in the knowledge and appre- 
 
 [92] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 elation of the ideas and sentiments of what has 
 value, — truth, happiness, beauty, and goodness; 
 and all given reality by being expressed in con- 
 duct, and by the formation of a character cor- 
 responding to these ideas and sentiments of 
 value. All this growth, however, is dependent 
 upon the continuous cooperation of those facul- 
 ties which, in their unity, belong to the nature 
 of man. Or, to turn the statement about, we 
 may say that man's personality by nature con- 
 sists in the possession of these forms of capacity; 
 and that development of these native capacities, 
 in unison, toward the goal of personal life which 
 his nature suggests as truly his own, is the devel- 
 opment of personality, stated in different terms. 
 The scientific description and explanation of 
 the act of knowledge, and of the growth of knowl- 
 edge, is the most difficult task of psychology. 
 The philosophy of knowledge lays the founda- 
 tions, and furnishes the introduction, of the 
 philosophy of life. Only as we assure ourselves 
 that our judgments represent in truth the reali- 
 ties of things, and the actual relations and changes 
 between things, have we any claims to a science, 
 or even to the bare existence, of a Universe. 
 Only as the interpretation of our own individual 
 experiences guarantees similar experiences in 
 other selves, can we have any points of starting, 
 or places of standing, for the social sciences. 
 The metaphysics of man's faculty for knowledge, 
 whether we find the guaranty for its certainty in 
 
 .[93] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 feeling or in reasoning, or in both, gives the only 
 key that can unlock the door, the only hand 
 that can raise the veil, between the otherwise 
 completely isolated subject of so-called mental 
 states and a real world of things and men. 
 
 We have just used the phrase, "the faculty of 
 knowledge." But, in truth, knowledge involves 
 the use of all the faculties. The knowledge of 
 which -persons become possessed requires the 
 cooperation of all those faculties which distin- 
 guish a truly personal from a merely animal 
 life. Up to a certain extent, however, it is 
 difficult or impossible to distinguish the qualities 
 and activities of the "intelligence" of some of 
 the animals from the intelligence of man. If we 
 remove, or greatly impair, certain centres in the 
 cerebrum of a highly trained dog, the animal 
 becomes "soul-bhnd" or "soul-deaf." He may 
 retain the power to see or to hear, — that is, 
 sensations of light or of sound may still be aroused 
 in organized form corresponding to some outside 
 object; but they have lost the meaning which 
 the animal's natural or artificial training had 
 given to them. The same thing happens to men 
 when nature or the ill fate of warfare deals with 
 them more ruthlessly than the knife or caustic 
 of the experimenting physiologist dares to do. 
 Within certain limits, as yet not quite rigidly 
 fixed, partial or complete recovery may take 
 place, whether the sufferer be animal or man. 
 The difference in recovery implies that difference 
 
 [94] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 in learning to which reference has already been 
 made (p. 45 f.). It would seem, then, that there 
 are important differences between persons and 
 animals even in the most fundamental of the 
 processes by which they acquire the knowledge 
 peculiar to their so-called faculties. For example, 
 the condition of what I have elsewhere called 
 "primary intellection" is the conscious recog- 
 nition of resemblances and differences.^ His 
 instincts, impulses, and above all his social sur- 
 roundings with their more intricate and multi- 
 plied training, compel the human infant to mind 
 many things which are indifferent to the animal. 
 This difference, in its higher forms, is recognized 
 by the humorous Japanese proverb: "Puppies 
 do not have the Buddha-spirit." 
 
 The similarities and differences that at first 
 are very vague and taken "in the lump," as it 
 were, by mental activities to which such names 
 are given as "comparison," with its two sides of 
 "analysis" and "synthesis," and the psychical 
 processes as well, which are sometimes called 
 "assimilation" and "differentiation," are com- 
 bined into perceptions and ideas of different 
 Things. Things are thus known as, at least in 
 some respects, like and in others unlike one 
 another, but never identically the same, other- 
 wise, they could not be different real things. In 
 order to be different to the mind, however, they 
 must be judged to be different. This act of 
 '■ See "Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory," p. 288 f. 
 
 [95] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 judgment has been well said by one philosopher, 
 to be "a second and higher consciousness," "a 
 new manifestation of psychic energy." In more 
 precise terms: The conscious affirmation of re- 
 lations of resemblance or difference between the 
 contents of consciousness is the primitive form 
 of judgment. But in order to make this judg- 
 ment amount to even the most crude and im- 
 perfect knowledge of a "Thing," it must be 
 accompanied by the metaphysical assumption or 
 belief in objective reality of the thing, indepen- 
 dent of the judgment which affirms its existence. 
 Such a metaphysical assumption or belief, en- 
 folding, as it does, the slumbering conceptions of 
 Self, Space, Time, and Reality, is of the distinctly 
 personal type. Dogs are, however intelligent 
 they are, not metaphysical as all men are. To 
 them, reality, as we understand it, has no meaning. 
 
 The knowledge of things, as human beings 
 know them, is stimulated and enlarged by the 
 social environment. The child is constantly 
 having his cognitive powers developed after the 
 type of his kind, by being compelled to pay 
 constant and serious attention to things, to the 
 right use of them, to their relations to himself 
 and to others; and, then, finally, to their less obvi- 
 ous and less immediately practical qualities and 
 relations. Home-life, play and work with his asso- 
 ciates, and more definitively life at school, if this 
 particular kind of life's schooling is given to him, 
 all afford instruction in the knowledge of things. 
 
 [96] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The personal quality of man's development of 
 the knowledge of things is further expressed and 
 cultivated far beyond anything possible for the 
 mind of the animal, by man's power to construct 
 and develop articulate speech, or language, such 
 as all men, and only men, invent and employ as 
 a distinctly personal means of communication. 
 When the infant of eighteen months, of whom 
 M. Taine tells, who had learned to call "coucou" 
 while playing hide-and-seek, and had been taught 
 to say "Qa brule" as a warning that his cup of 
 milk was too hot, or the candle too near, cried 
 out "Qa-brule coucou," as he saw the burning 
 sun disappear suddenly behind a hill, he showed 
 powers in the growth of knowledge far tran- 
 scending those possible to be displayed by any 
 animal. For he had united, of himself and not 
 by any trainer's whip or lump of sugar impressed, 
 two entirely distinct conceptions in an act of 
 judgment that assumed the objective reality of 
 them both. 
 
 The further increase, refinement, and certify- 
 ing of knowledge requires a higher and more 
 elaborate exercise of the faculty of intellect. 
 To the exercise of this faculty the names of 
 inference, reasoning, proving, and other terms 
 have been given. Whether puppies or grown 
 dogs of the more intelligent breeds possess, or 
 not, this activity of the "Buddha-spirit," depends, 
 of course, on how we use our terms. If animals 
 reason at all, it certamly is not in the manner to 
 
 [97] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 correspond with the conception of "reasoning" 
 as the process is fully described in treatises on 
 logic, whether formal or psychological. We have 
 no evidence in their conduct that they con- 
 sciously place their conclusions on grounds of pre- 
 viously estabhshed general judgments; or that 
 they chain together a series of judgments by the 
 conscious thought," this is hy cause of that," or, 
 that being true, therefore, or for that reason, this 
 other follows as a matter of course. Indeed, in 
 man's case it is rarely, if ever, that the process 
 of reasoning as a conscious fact involves a con- 
 sciousness of the separate steps of reasoning as 
 the latter are described in detail by formal logic. 
 
 There is enough, however, in every genuine act 
 of reasoning, as men reason in the development 
 of knowledge, to warrant our calling it "a second 
 and higher consciousness," "a new manifestation 
 of psychic energy." "Thinking," says Professor 
 Ward, "may be broadly described as solving a 
 problem — finding an AX that is B." In its 
 two principal forms. Deduction, or reasoning from 
 accepted truths to new particular applications 
 of them, and Induction, or inferring general 
 truths from the observation of particular instances 
 to the explanation of which the truths, as at 
 first assumed or conjectured, seem to apply, the 
 science of reasoning in man must recognize the 
 personal activities that achieve his growth in 
 knowledge. But these two forms of reasoning 
 are never separated in any achievement of new 
 
 [98] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 knowledge, — important or trivial, knowledge of 
 particular things or knowledge of general laws. 
 For example: particular disturbances in the 
 movements of a particular planet, supposedly 
 united under the principle of gravitation with 
 other known planets, favor the deduction that 
 another and as yet unknown planet is in existence, 
 whose behavior must conform with the same 
 general principle; at the inferred correct time 
 the telescope is directed to the right inferred 
 spot, and another particular planet is discovered 
 to be in fact obeying the same law, that had been 
 derived from an infinite number of previous 
 inductions. Again: It is extremely desirable for 
 the science of physics that a practically achro- 
 matic lens should be discovered. A great French 
 authority on lenses, basing his deduction on the 
 laws of optics as far as accepted at the time, 
 confidently declares that this can never be done. 
 An American physicist, after months of tedious 
 calculation with the use of the higher mathemat- 
 ics, infers that, given two pieces of glass of the 
 right refracting indices, as calculated but as yet 
 never manufactured, and bring their surfaces 
 together, each having the calculated curvature; 
 and then the required achromatic lens will, in 
 fact, result. By prolonged experiment the two 
 imagined kinds of glass are actually made; the 
 physicist himself grinds and polishes them to 
 the required curvature; and the lens, that had 
 been proved impossible by a previous deduction, 
 
 [99] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 takes its place among existing realities, and thus 
 serves the purposes of a new induction. Such 
 processes as these infinitely transcend the work- 
 ings of an animal intellect. They are achieve- 
 ments of a personal reason braced by personal 
 will. 
 
 It would be impossible thoroughly to analyze 
 these two instances of notable scientific dis- 
 coveries, without disclosing all those forms of 
 activity, thought, feeling, and will, which enter 
 into the constitution of the rational life, and of 
 the development of knowledge, in man. But 
 none of these forms is peculiar in any essential 
 way to the individual trained in the methods 
 of scientific research, with its demands for con- 
 trolled observation, suspended judgment, doubt, 
 inductive and deductive reasoning; and further 
 demand for proof of the conclusion by the con- 
 tinuance of the test of "putting it to work." 
 The plain man, the man who is rated by his 
 fellows as almost a fool, solves his particular 
 problems every hour of his waking life in essen- 
 tially the same ways. 
 
 In this connection it is well to refer again to 
 the three principles of continuity, cooperation, 
 and individuality. Formal logic divides the 
 entire intellectual process called reasoning into 
 the three stages of conception, judgment, and in- 
 ference under some form of the syllogism. But as 
 I have said elsewhere ("Psychology, Descriptive 
 and Explanatory," p. 437): "Conception, iudg- 
 
 [100] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 ment, and reasoning must all be regarded as 
 actual forms of psychoses in the flowing stream of 
 consciousness; the rather do we designate by 
 these words certain successions of psychoses which 
 derive their characteristics from the nature of their 
 sequence, — and of the laws, or fixed forms, which 
 are shown by the states of consciousness in this 
 sequence." No mental act, or attitude toward 
 any reality, such as logic calls a "conception," 
 can take place without previous reasoning, or 
 without embodying numbers of judgments. No 
 judgment is ever formed, that may not be re- 
 garded as a union of conceptions, or ideas, — a 
 union that must be accounted for by processes 
 of reasoning. No inference is ever drawn, under 
 any one of the simplest or most mixed figures of 
 the so-called syllogism, that is not dependent on 
 previously formed conceptions and judgments. 
 Do you ask: How can such a thing be true, 
 and, If it were true, how can the mind ever 
 make any advance in its knowledge? I reply: 
 The thing is, in fact, true; and the reason is 
 that the mind is not a conglomerate, or even an 
 ordered collection, of faculties, to each of which 
 a localized and semi-independent function can 
 be assigned, as may be done to different organs 
 of the physical organism. The mind has the 
 unity of a life spiritual, developing as such a 
 unity, with all its so-called faculties cooperating 
 in every state and stage of this life. Indeed, 
 our list of faculties, and of the functions which we 
 
 [101] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 say they perform, and of the products which we 
 assign to them, are only abstract terms represent- 
 ing "moments" or "aspects" of the one life. 
 In reality, they have no separate, or separated 
 activity. 
 
 The account which has been given of the 
 development of a knowledge of things, after the 
 personal type, does not serve to explain the de- 
 velopment of self-knowledge. It could not serve 
 this purpose, even if it were made by the com- 
 bmed efforts of all the most suggestive geniuses in 
 psychology, and stretched out to mdefinite 
 lengths. In fact, it does not give the barest 
 elements for a satisfactory description of the 
 growth which every individual man, of normal 
 development, makes in the knowledge of things. 
 For the development of the knowledge of things 
 is dependent upon the development, with some- 
 thing like an equal pace, of the knowledge of 
 Self. 
 
 The infantile personality must discover itself 
 as a will capable of producing effects, in order 
 that it may know other things and other persons 
 as having wills that are not its own, and that 
 cross and thwart, and refuse to yield to, its will. 
 The discovery depends upon the child's applying 
 reflective thinking to the results of its own deeds 
 of will, as involved in all its own thinking, feeling, 
 and conduct. From this same source — the will 
 to live, the will to know, the will to achieve the 
 satisfaction of natural impulses and desires — as 
 
 [102] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 subjected to reflection, and regulated by the 
 successes it attains and the failures which it en- 
 counters, spring the beliefs and ideas of reality 
 for the Self and for things, and the actuality of 
 causal relations between them. From the same 
 source, — the will to enjoy the social life and to 
 reach the ideals of art, morality, and religion, — 
 as aroused, refined, and disciplined by reflection, 
 springs the development of the knowledge of 
 that which has value. 
 
 A charming description of the earlier activi- 
 ties in which the child-life knows and realizes 
 itself as a will, and grows in the self-consciousness 
 of a personal being, is given by Preyer in his 
 "The Mind of the Child" (II, p. 191f.). It is 
 worth for our purpose quoting^at length. 
 
 "Another important factor is the 'perception of 
 a change produced by one's own activity in all 
 sorts of familiar objects that can be taken hold 
 of in the neighborhood; and the most remarkable 
 day, from a psycho-genetic point of view, in any 
 case an extremely significant day in the life of 
 the infant, is the one in which he first experiences 
 the connection of a jnovement executed by himself 
 loith a sense-impression following upon it. The 
 noise that comes from the tearing and crumpling 
 of paper is as yet unknown to the child. He 
 discovers (in the fifth month) the fact that he 
 himself in tearing paper into smaller and smaller 
 pieces has again and again the new sound-sensa- 
 tion, and he repeats the experiment day by day 
 
 [103] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 and with a strain of exertion until this occupation 
 has lost the charm of novelty. At present there 
 is not, indeed, any clear insight into the nexus of 
 cause; but the child has now had the experience 
 that he can himself be the cause of a combined 
 perception of sound and sight regularly, to the 
 extent that when he tears the paper there appears, 
 on the one hand, the lessening in size; on the 
 other hand, the noise. The patience with 
 which this occupation — from the forty-fifth to 
 the fifty -fifth week especially — is continued 
 with pleasure is explained by the gratification 
 at being a cause, at the perception that so strik- 
 ing a transformation as that of the newspaper 
 into fragments has been efifected by means of his 
 own activity. Other occupations of this sort 
 which are taken up again and again with a 
 persistency incomprehensible to an adult, are 
 the shaking of a bunch of keys, the opening and 
 closing of a box or purse (thirteenth month); 
 the pulling out and emptying, and then the filling 
 and pushing in of a table drawer; the heaping 
 up and strewing about of garden mould or 
 gravel; the tearing of leaves of a book (thirteenth 
 to nineteenth month); digging and scraping in 
 the sand; the carrying of footstools hither and 
 thither; the placing of shells, stones, or buttons 
 in rows (twenty -first month); pouring water 
 into and out of bottles, cups, watering-pots 
 (thirty -first to thirty-third) months; and, in the 
 case of my boy, the throwing of stones into the 
 [104] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 water. The little girl in the eleventh month 
 found her chief pleasure in rummaging with 
 trifles in drawers and little boxes. Her sister 
 played with all sorts of things, taking an interest 
 in dolls and pictures in the tenth month. Here, 
 too, the eagerness and seriousness with which 
 such apparently aimless movements are per- 
 formed is remarkable. The satisfaction they 
 afford must be very great, and it probably has 
 its basis in the feeling of his own power generated 
 by the movements of the child himself (changes 
 of place, of position, of form) and in the proud 
 feeling of being a cause." 
 
 The necessity of admitting a division in the 
 means and the results belonging to the develop- 
 ment of personality on the side of knowledge is 
 too obvious to admit of doubt or sceptical criti- 
 cism. Every person must have some Knowl- 
 edge of Self as well as some Knowledge of Things. 
 And this bi-partition, or di-remption — if this 
 is not too strong a word — of activities in the 
 acquiring of knowledge, and of the objects of 
 knowledge, must result from development. For 
 what Tennyson has expressed in the sentimental 
 way of poetic simplicity is profoundly true 
 when converted into terms of the science of 
 psychology or of the theory of cognition. 
 
 "The baby, new to earth and sky. 
 
 What time his tender palm is pressed 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 Has never thought that this is I. 
 
 [105] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 But as he grows, he gathers much. 
 
 And learns the use of I and me. 
 
 And finds I am not what I see. 
 And other than the things I touch. 
 
 So rounds he to a separate mind. 
 
 From whence clear memory may begin. 
 As thro' the frame that binds him in. 
 
 His isolation grows defined." 
 
 This special form of activity — sometimes 
 treated as a "faculty" or better, a particular 
 direction of a group of so-called faculties — has 
 received the title ' ' Self -consciousness . ' ' Accepting 
 this rather naive, offhand division, every person 
 may then be said to have faculties of sense- 
 perception by which he acquires the knowledge 
 of things, and a faculty of self-consciousness by 
 which he acquires a knowledge of himself. But 
 for the development of both these kinds of 
 knowledge he makes use of his faculty of in- 
 ference or of learning from others. 
 
 The statement of the function of self-con- 
 sciousness, as it has just been made, is much too 
 easy-going; and indeed, any professional student 
 of the actual conditions and stages in the de- 
 velopment of knowledge in the individual man 
 would resent it as a caricature of his own views. 
 There has been much discussion between the 
 advocates of two extreme theories as to the 
 nature and authority of personal self-conscious- 
 ness; and there have been, and still are, many 
 theories lying all the way between the two ex- 
 
 [106] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 tremes. According to some psychologists, there 
 can be no such thing as an immediate and au- 
 thoritative act of self-knowledge. With them 
 the very word suggests an absurdity. Before I, 
 as Subject, could catch myself, as object, in any 
 state of consciousness, any condition of feeling, 
 or ideation, or image-making, that particular 
 state or condition has already passed away. At 
 best I can only have some fading memory-image 
 of what that last state was. But the memory- 
 image is doomed to the same impossibility of 
 its being the subject's immediately and intui- 
 tively known object, as has been already aflfirmed 
 of every mental condition or activity. And as 
 to having an intuitive conception of what it is 
 really to be a Self, or even of the bare fact that I 
 am a Self; — much more, as to what kind of a Self 
 I really am, and what kind of reality I have, and 
 whether I have any reality at all, as a self; why! 
 all such assumptions are doubly absurd when 
 clothed with the authority of so-called self- 
 consciousness. For all that self -consciousness can 
 tell us, we are really to ourselves only what others 
 are to us, and what we are to them, "a moving 
 row of shadow shapes that come and go." This, 
 then, must be the answer to our question: What 
 is it to be a person? 
 
 In the supposed interests of all that is most 
 valuable and best worth living for with an un- 
 swerving and devoted purpose, another theory 
 of the nature and authority of self-consciousness 
 
 [107] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 has, with equal or even greater confidence, been 
 put forth. Self -consciousness gives an immediate 
 and indubitable knowledge, an envisagement, of 
 the substantial reality of the Self. As Professor 
 James has said ("Principles of Psychology," 
 II, p. 297) — in this statement contradict- 
 ing other statements of his own, in his cus- 
 tomary charming way: "Our own reality, that 
 sense of our own life which we at every moment 
 possess, is the ultimate of ultimates for our be- 
 lief." Some of this school would have it that 
 every mental state is essentially and fully self- 
 conscious, though not in the form of philosophical 
 reflection; and that our confidence in the evi- 
 dence of self-consciousness justifies us in found- 
 ing upon it, not only a belief in the reality of 
 the Self, but also an indisputable knowledge of the 
 essential qualities of selfhood. In this case the 
 necessity, if not the benefit, of writing books in 
 the hope of making the secret of personality a 
 little clearer to one's self and to others, would, 
 fortunately, be greatly impaired if not wholly 
 abolished. 
 
 As happens with most extreme views on any 
 subject of large general experience, whether hav- 
 ing to do with the knowledge of things or with 
 the knowledge of selves, neither of these theories 
 of the nature and authority of self-consciousness 
 is wholly true or wholly false. Each of the two 
 is partly true and each is either unfortunately 
 stated or partly mistaken and false. But one 
 
 [108] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 cannot reach satisfaction for his own mind by 
 borrowing something from both, or by taking 
 an unthinking attitude somewhere between the 
 two. To make a start in the assurance as to a 
 working theory of self-consciousness, its nature 
 and authority, every mind may be safely left 
 to its own reflections. And when we utter the 
 word "reflections" we assume something with 
 regard to the activities, and something with 
 regard to the object toward which the activities 
 are directed. Every sane man incontestably 
 believes in some sort of reality for his own here- 
 and-now existence; but most men would be 
 puzzled enough if called upon to define in what, 
 completely, that reality consists. All the phil- 
 osophical wisdom in the history of reflective 
 thinking has not sufficed to answer the question 
 of meaning; but all the philosophical nihilism 
 or sceptical criticism of the past has not in any 
 degree diminished confidence in the fact. Even 
 the rasane have the same confidence. The mud- 
 dled self-consciousness of the Real A may change 
 him into the Apostle Paul at one hour and into 
 the Apostle Peter at the next hour; but the exist- 
 ence of the Self about whose name and perqui- 
 sites he doubts, or to which he has for the time 
 being pinned his faith, is still believed to have its 
 own reality of a sort. So it is in cases of double 
 personality. 
 
 It is not our purpose to expound at length what 
 we consider to be the true doctrine of self-con- 
 
 [109] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 sciousness — its nature and authority; or, in 
 this connection, even to state the elements of 
 personality concerned in the development of 
 self-knowledge for which such a form of conscious 
 activity may be held indirectly responsible. So 
 far as is necessary for the former of these two 
 purposes, what has been said about the natural 
 distinction between body and soul, the centre of 
 the soul's reality as to what we call will, and the 
 coming to oneself as a consciousness of body, 
 sex, and of being socially related to other selves, 
 has included the more important particulars. 
 The latter of the two inquiries will occupy us 
 in all the remainder of our search for some solu- 
 tion of the mystery of man's personal life. 
 Somehow or other every adult human being ar- 
 rives at a certain kind and amount of self-knowl- 
 edge. Every person is certain that he, as a 
 living reality, does actually correspond in cer- 
 tain respects to the conception he has formed 
 of himself. A few words of explanation at this 
 point, however, will make our present position 
 clearer and our future task easier and more 
 plausible. 
 
 Of course, the act called self-consciousness 
 cannot be said to give an intuition, or "immedi- 
 ate knowledge of the Self," not [even as being for 
 the moment in any particular condition or state, 
 if by affirming its "immediacy" we mean to 
 deny its duration in time. There are no states 
 of the mind that are statical: there are no forms 
 
 [110] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 of consciousness that do not — as the appropriate 
 figure of speech puts the truth — "consume" 
 some time. Indeed, the very science of psycho- 
 physics is based upon the determination within 
 limits of (T, or one-thousandth of a second, just 
 how much time it takes to form the different 
 kinds and compHcations of the so-called mental 
 states. It always takes more or less time to 
 come to consciousness, whether this process of 
 coming terminates in the perception of a thing, 
 or of a change of relation between things, of a 
 mental state, or of a change in mental states. 
 When we talk about the lightning-like speed 
 of thought, we are likely to deceive ourselves. 
 To see a flash of lightning takes longer than the 
 electrical change which causes the flash. Those 
 then who deny the authority of self-conscious- 
 ness on the ground that a timeless envisagement 
 of the Self is impossible, set up a man of straw 
 which they must take but sorry satisfaction in 
 knocking down. 
 
 But those who claim that every act of con- 
 sciousness is always also an act of self-conscious- 
 ness are almost equally in the wrong, when we 
 come to bring the alleged facts to the test of ex- 
 perience. When I am watching a fireman take 
 a child out of the window and down the ladder 
 from a burning building, or a horse running away 
 with a buggy containing friends of mine, I do not 
 in the least degree reflect the fact that it is 7 who 
 am doing the seeing. When I am narrating what 
 
 [111] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 I saw, I affirm the authority of self-consciousness 
 in the reflective act of memory. But not all 
 memory is reflective. It is, indeed, impossible 
 to think of others, no matter how much they 
 may force a correction of my reflective memory, 
 as remembering anything for me. It is I who 
 do my own remembering, whether its object be 
 the look of any particular thing, or how I felt 
 at the time of seeing it. 
 
 The conception of what it is to be a Self, 
 and equally the conception of my own particular 
 Self, is not a matter for immediate knowledge, 
 or for mental envisagement, in a single mental 
 act. It is formed by intellectual processes es- 
 sentially the same as those by which we arrive 
 at the conception of things, or of some particular 
 thing. But the contents, "the stuft'" moulded 
 into conceptual form, is different in the two cases. 
 What we may call "the feeling-tone" is also 
 different in the two cases. As I have said else- 
 where ("Psychology, Descriptive and Explana- 
 tory," p. 521): "The knowledge which is of self 
 differs from the knowledge which sense-percep- 
 tion brings, both as respects content of conscious- 
 ness and general tone of consciousness. This 
 knowledge has its content not chiefly in sensations 
 at all, but in mental images, thoughts, feelings, or 
 volitions. The sensuous elements of conscious- 
 ness, especially those of the most definitely local- 
 ized and clearly projected sort, are relatively 
 suppressed. In predominating states of self- 
 
 [112] 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
 
 consciousness, the sensations are of the vague, un- 
 localized order, which are attributable to myself 
 as a sentient organism, rather than to any ob- 
 jective thing. But especially is the attention 
 directed to feelings which are interesting to me, 
 as my feelings, because of their tone of pleasure 
 or pain. In this way, by the influence of feel- 
 ing over attention, one often passes back and 
 forth between the objective and the subjective 
 aspects of the same experience. For example, 
 when one is in the bath one feels the temperature 
 of the water as the quality of an external thing; 
 but if it is greatly too cold or too hot one becomes 
 aware of oneself as suffering with . the pain of 
 heat or cold. It is largely because of their ordi- 
 narily toneless character as feeling that our visual 
 sensation-complexes are customarily known as 
 qualities of external things." If all goes well, 
 I know the qualities of the food by teeth and 
 tongue and roof of the mouth. But when the 
 eyes become inflamed, one does not question 
 the authority as to whose eyes ache; nor does 
 one need to go to the dentist to find out whose 
 is the pain, although the dentist himself may 
 have difficulty in discovering which particular 
 tooth is the external cause. It will not do, 
 however, to say with Lotze, that "the crushed 
 worm writhing in pain undoubtedly distinguishes 
 its own suffering from the rest of the world, though 
 it can understand neither its own Ego nor the 
 nature of the external world." There is little 
 
 C 113 ] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 reason to suppose that for the worm there is 
 any distinction between ego and world, or any 
 capacity for referring the pain to an Ego, and so 
 for appreciating it as "its own suffering" in any 
 intelligible meaning of the words. 
 
 The development of personality, then, as in- 
 volving growth in the knowledge of Self is the 
 achievement of intellect as a capacity and activ- 
 ity of the personal type. And this is the same 
 type of intellect on the achievements of which 
 we rely for the development of the knowledge 
 of things. The two kinds of personal develop- 
 ment are interdependent; they go hand in hand 
 within certain limits, and up to a certain dis- 
 tance along the same path. But the sanest 
 activities of this same intellect compel it to 
 conceive of the Self as having qualities that can- 
 not be ascribed to any Thing; although every- 
 thing is known by the Self, only as having some 
 of the qualities in lower degree which every Self 
 knows itself to have. The development of this 
 higher degree of self-knowledge requires the ap- 
 pearance in consciousness of thoughts, senti- 
 ments, aspirations, and ideas and ideals, such as 
 incite and regulate the personal life along the 
 lines of science, morals, art, and religion. 
 
 [114] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 T would seem that in order to be Anybody, 
 — in other words, any sort of a Person, — 
 ii so much development of the knowledge of 
 things and of the knowledge of oneself, as has 
 been described in the preceding chapters, is a 
 minimum requirement. The human being who 
 would lay reasonable claim to personality, even 
 of the meanest grade, must know, with an in- 
 dubitable conviction of its certainty, something 
 of himself, something of other selves, and much 
 that concerns his own physical constitution and 
 its physical environment. He must know him- 
 self as an intelligent will, capable of producing 
 changes, but only within certain limits, and 
 compelled to suffer changes in his states of feel- 
 ing and thought by external influences that are 
 not subject to his will. He must also have 
 powers of reasoning which go somewhat beyond 
 the knowledge that is given to him in the seem- 
 ingly more intuitive ways of so-called sense- 
 perception and self -consciousness. But he is 
 a poorly endowed and insufficiently educated 
 person who has not a much larger credit to his 
 
 [115] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 claim on personal life than is scantily summed 
 up in all this. 
 
 Any further development — and its explana- 
 tion and justifying — are sometimes ascribed 
 to secondary reflective activity and habit under 
 the name of "the philosophical consciousness." 
 All men have "natural self -consciousness " ; but 
 only a good few, distinguished by special gifts 
 of inquisitiveness and ambition to sound the 
 depths of truth and reahty, and perhaps also 
 having within their reach particularly favorable 
 opportunities for self-culture, acquire any skill 
 in philosophical self -consciousness. We have al- 
 ready seen how certain individuals have ex- 
 perienced a coming to the better Self that, for 
 suddenness, and for depth and loftiness of attain- 
 ment, has greatly surpassed that of most of the 
 race. It is by no means all men who ever have 
 the clear vision of the Ego, the intuition and the 
 conviction that can only express themselves in 
 the sentence "I am I," after the fashion of Jean 
 Paul Richter. This poet philosopher records 
 of his experiences: "Never shall I forget the 
 phenomenon in myself, never till now recited, 
 when I stood by the birth of my own self-con- 
 sciousness, the place and time of which are dis- 
 tinct in my memory. On a certain forenoon 
 I stood, a very young child, within the house- 
 door, and was looking out toward the wood-piles. 
 In an instant, the inner revelation, 'I am I,' like 
 lightning from heaven, flashed and stood brightly 
 
 [116] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 before me; in that moment I had seen myself as 
 I, for the first time and forever." 
 
 But there is no hard and fixed Hne to be drawn 
 between the natural and the philosophic con- 
 sciousness. The data of the natural conscious- 
 ness are the only sources of information for the 
 philosopher whenever he essays the answer to 
 any problem concerning what are the essential 
 truths contained in them. And, Woe to his 
 findings and to his lasting reputation as a re- 
 flective thinker, if he despises or misinterprets 
 greatly these, his only available data. On the 
 contrary, if he counsels with the "plain man's" 
 opinions and convictions as to his own personal 
 characteristics, and the inferences which shape his 
 naiver, and for that very reason often less prej- 
 udiced convictions and conclusions; the philos- 
 opher is the less likely to go far astray in his 
 approaches to the secrets of the personal life. 
 No popular absurdities can possibly rival those 
 which, in all ages, have been rife in books on 
 philosophy and theology. 
 
 It is true beyond question, however, that a 
 great extension of the knowledge of what it is 
 to be a person, beyond that which has been 
 brought to the attention of the average man, is 
 necessary for the satisfaction even in a lamen- 
 tably feeble way, of every earnest inquirer. For 
 there are as many and serious moral as mental 
 obstacles in the path of him who would attain 
 this satisfaction. Self-indulgence and the degra- 
 
 [117] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 dation of the sentiments of truth, beauty, and 
 righteousness, are chief among the former class; 
 indifference and mental laziness among the lat- 
 ter. Indeed, it is difficult for the teacher to 
 whom is committed, or who has voluntarily 
 assumed, the task of expounding the doctrine 
 of the personal life, to tell which of these two 
 classes of obstacles is the more difficult to over- 
 come. At any rate, it must be recognized that 
 much further study of the problem of personality 
 demands in both proposer and critic a more 
 severe and thoroughly disciplined exercise of the 
 powers of reflection. Only the sharpened spear- 
 point with the thrust of a determined will behind 
 it, can reach to the heart of the mystery of man's 
 personal nature and the laws of, and means avail- 
 able for, its realest and highest development. 
 
 Those who studied the hand-books on formal 
 logic in use a half-century ago will recall, as the 
 creaking of a rusty saw, the major premise of 
 an argument, as follows: "Man is a rational 
 animal, etc." This premise might be used in 
 either its backward-looking or its forward-look- 
 ing form. As an induction it might be claimed 
 proven by observation of all, or at the worst, of 
 the vast majority of men. This in spite of the 
 fact that every man's observation makes him 
 doubt its application to a large minority, if not 
 to a positive majority, of the men with whom he 
 is acquainted. And of all men: What could he 
 know, or anybody know, by observation, about 
 [118] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 all men; or about any relatively large number 
 of men. Its use as a deduction — if applied to 
 oneself, a demonstration — runs as follows : If 
 all men are rational animals, then I, John Smith, 
 am rational, no matter how much of an animal 
 I may be. The text-books of the same period 
 which undertook" to demonstrate the evidences 
 of natural theology assumed, as a matter of 
 course, that all men are free. But what is it to 
 be rational? as man is rational; and. What is it 
 to be free? as man is free? These are questions 
 the answer to which cannot be given without 
 calling out all the reserves of reflective or phil- 
 osophical consciousness. This is true in spite 
 of the obvious fact that the times have changed, 
 and with them the attitude of the public toward 
 the metaphysics of morals and religion: and 
 that over the troubled heart of a generation which 
 had resolved in vain no longer to bother itself 
 with metaphysical problems, the masque of 
 Comus and his merry rout had been taken on. 
 
 "Strict age, and sour severity. 
 
 With their grave saws, in slumber lie." 
 
 The demand still remains, however, for some 
 sort of rationality, and for some sort of freedom, 
 which exceed anything possessed by any animal, 
 if man, as man, is going to understand and vindi- 
 cate his claim to a genuinely personal life. Has 
 man, the average man, these personal qualifi- 
 cations; and precisely what do we mean when 
 we attribute them to him? 
 
 [119] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 It belongs to the biological sciences to answer 
 the question: What is it to be an animal as every 
 man is an animal? In the partial but progres- 
 sively correct and full answer to this question, 
 all these sciences have their resources of observa- 
 tion and inference taxed to the utmost. The 
 end of their efforts is not yet in sight. By all 
 their discoveries the mystery of life is rendered 
 more complicated and profound. The biologi- 
 cal explanation of all animal life culminates in 
 the life of man. By universal consent, the 
 problem which the physical life of man offers is 
 at once the goal and, as yet, almost the despair 
 of these sciences. 
 
 But the question. What is it to be rational.'' 
 while in a way dependently connected with an 
 animal body, transcends the limits of the biological 
 sciences. It is a question for reflective thinking, 
 in its higher or so-called philosophical form. 
 The moment we raise it, however, we enter the 
 domain of metaphysics. For we raise a question 
 which concerns the reality of the subject of knowl- 
 edge and, as well, the reality of the objects of 
 knowledge. At the basis of all rationality, then, 
 lies the belief in, and respect for, reality. Re- 
 pulsive as the word is to many who claim to be 
 the foremost champions of scientific truth, the 
 simple fact is that the foundation of man's ration- 
 ality, and so the last impregnable stronghold for 
 the defence of all human science, is man's meta- 
 physical nature. How the mental attitude of 
 
 [120] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 belief in reality, and the respect for truth as the 
 mental representative of reality, comes to be the 
 objective "correlate" or "extra-mental" aspect 
 of all knowledge has been the subject of much 
 dispute. And no wonder; because the attitude 
 is itself assumed as already there, in every dis- 
 pute about itself. Nor can we very well attribute 
 it to inference, and the accumulation of knowl- 
 edge by use of the intellect on the part of the 
 individual or of the race; for all inference im- 
 plies the belief, and all accumulation of the re- 
 sults of observation and inference only illustrates 
 and confirms the same assumption. The scien- 
 tist who decries metaphysics and claims for 
 science only a linking together of phenomena, 
 without any reference to the truth of reality to 
 which the linking aims to correspond, and which 
 in his own thought the method of linking faith- 
 fully represents, does not mean what he says. 
 He could not say anything unless he had an in- 
 vincible conviction of the reality of other beings, 
 of a rationality similar to his own. Indeed, the 
 language he uses, and the thought he is unhap- 
 pily trying to express, could not have for him 
 even phenomenal existence, independent of the 
 reality and the invincible belief in reality, which 
 provide the soul of their significance. The very 
 word "phenomenon" has no meaning except as 
 the correlate of some reality, thing or self, whose 
 phenomenon it is. There is no appearance 
 (phenomenon) which is not the appearance, of 
 
 [121] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 some real thing to some real self. Thus much is 
 true, though in a sort of indirect and impUed 
 fashion, of such phenomena as ghosts and cen- 
 taurs and heathen gods. When I reject, as 
 well as when I affirm, my belief in the ghost which 
 is now a phenomenon, or in the ghost whose 
 appearance was present to your sight last night, 
 I affirm the reality of my own existence, and of 
 your existence, and of the producer of the ghost- 
 like phenomenon as some real somebody's imagi- 
 nation or some real external thing. 
 
 The attempt has been persistently made by 
 rival schools of philosophy to limit this belief 
 in the reality of the object of knowledge to 
 only one of the two classes of knowledge, either 
 the knowledge of things or the knowledge of 
 self. In this attempt the denials of both schools 
 cancel each other; and the concessions of each 
 sufficiently supplement the claims of the other. 
 A materialistic realism would deny the reality 
 of the rational self; such a self, and all its ideas 
 and feelings and voluntary activities are, in its 
 opinion, only phenomena of the true reality, — ■ 
 the bodily organism, and especially the nervous 
 system with its regal creative crown, the cerebral 
 hemispheres. The retort is obvious and per- 
 fectly crushing. All you know of this physical 
 marvel of a creator of human rationality, in- 
 cluding the sentiments, ideals, and achievements 
 of science, morals, art, and religion; what is it, 
 — your boasted knowledge of the real thing, — 
 
 [122] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 but the creation of the same rational being, the 
 phenomenon of the same thinking mind, whose 
 reality you deny? 
 
 But the fall of subjective idealism before the 
 onsets of its rival is no less conspicuous and 
 severe. And now it is things which are denied 
 the priceless title to reality. All the substance, 
 the "bone" of existence, as the Hebrew and 
 Shemitic languages generally call that which has 
 the qualities, and is entitled to at least a relative 
 permanence and a higher style of identity, be- 
 longs to the thinking, feeling, willing Self. And 
 since I know other selves only as thing-like exist- 
 ences, after I have advanced so far along the path 
 in the development of knowledge as to make the 
 grand distinction in objects; does not the con- 
 clusion follow of M. Flournoy, in his remarks 
 on "Phenomenism" — a doctrine he unqualifiedly 
 avows in the interests of positive science: "My 
 state of consciousness, that is all the reality." 
 " The very bread one eats might well have its real- 
 ity spared, it only the phenomenon of eating were 
 followed by the phenomena of no longer being 
 hungry and being invigorated." But when this 
 metaphysician conceives of the same attitude 
 being taken toward his own wife and children, 
 and all humanity, past, present, and future, 
 "the bare idea of this solitude gives him a chill 
 in the spine." If this chill is no better answer 
 to this form of phenomenism than the cele- 
 brated kick of Dr. Johnson, there is enough of 
 
 [123] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 truth in the assertions of the other and opposite 
 form of phenomenism. Knowledge of myself 
 cannot be gained except as I act and react in 
 surroundings of real things; and knowledge of 
 other selves can be gained at all, only as we know 
 them (it makes no difference how near and dear 
 they are to us, or how intimate our daily com- 
 munion with them) through the phenomena of 
 their bodily organism. 
 
 It is worth repeating, then: The very founda- 
 tion of man's rationality is his metaphysical 
 nature. Embodied in all his knowledge, and in 
 all his use of knowledge, and even in the ele- 
 mentary processes involved in every act of know- 
 ing, is the ever invincible belief in reality. The 
 terms of knowledge are ever changing; and the 
 realities are ever changing. But the essential 
 nature of knowledge of the rational type as it 
 belongs to man remains unchanged. As re- 
 spects things, in the primary knowledge of them, 
 the truth has been well expressed by Riehl: "The 
 compulsion to apprehend every sense-experience 
 as the sense-experience of Something, as the 
 property of some subject, XY," is beyond all 
 doubt. Reflective self-consciousness, even in its 
 lower stages, proclaims essentially the same truth 
 of fact with regard to the Self. 
 
 Respect for Reality, in other words, regard for 
 truth, characterizes all the endeavors and work 
 of genuine science. Nor is the same quality 
 wanting altogether in the rational nature of the 
 
 [124] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 average man. Another universal judgment, based 
 on an equally wide induction, has indeed de- 
 clared: "All men are liars;" more especially: 
 "The Cretans are all liars." Although the one 
 judgment was pronounced "in haste," and the 
 other applies to men now long since dead, the 
 boasted advances of civilization have not greatly 
 discredited either of the two. At any rate, 
 abundant experience confirms the fact that men 
 in general are prone to prejudice, and given to 
 self-deceit in their habitual attitudes of intellect, 
 feeling, and conduct toward the facts and truths 
 of reality. How, then, can we say that respect 
 for reality is a universal and essential charac- 
 teristic of the rationality that is inherent in hu- 
 man nature? 
 
 Modern science protests its love of "the truth 
 for the truth's own sake," and whether it is 
 palatable to all men or to any one man, or 
 not. Science is the avowed and determined foe of 
 obscurantism in any of its many subtle and 
 attractive forms. It is thus squarely, or by 
 quite legitimate inference, opposed to those 
 philosophers who hold the doctrine that the 
 evidence and meaning and value of truth are to 
 be determined by the "way the truth works." 
 Thus in their different ways, science makes a 
 profoimd obeisance to that characteristic of 
 man's rational nature for which we are contend- 
 ing; while philosophy only gives it a passing nod 
 of seeming assent. Neither of the two, however, 
 
 [125] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 can be interpreted to the satisfaction of reason 
 without coming to a virtual agreement over the 
 fact for which we are contending: A certain 
 attitude of the whole man — mind, heart, and 
 will —that indicates "respect for reality," is an 
 essential characteristic of his rationality and of 
 the development of the rational life as becoming 
 to man. In the current form in which the de- 
 voted student of any one of the sciences, phys- 
 ico-chemical, psychological, or social, commends 
 the spirit most appropriate to his work, there is, 
 without interpretation, no meaning at all. The 
 words "for its own sake" cannot properly apply 
 to an abstraction. Only realities have any 
 "sake of their own." The only realities con- 
 cerned in science are selves and things. And 
 unless things are assumed to take a conscious and 
 active interest in being known by selves, and in 
 being truly known, it is man whose sake is served 
 by the knowledge of what is true about things. 
 But to limit this concern to the regions of phys- 
 ical acquisition and the interests therewith con- 
 nected, would not express, but would degrade, the 
 very spirit of science which it acclaims. It is the 
 fuller satisfaction of man's rational nature which 
 science seeks. It is the truth which affords this 
 satisfaction. But truth implies a correspondence 
 between reason and reality; and the spirit which 
 seeks this truth "for its own sake" — i.e., for the 
 satisfaction it affords to the rational nature of 
 man, — is a certain respect for reality. 
 [126] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 When we assert that the evidence for the 
 truth, and the meaning and value of truth, are 
 to be found in the way that any judgment deemed 
 true is found to work, we misinterpret and de- 
 grade the nature of reason itself, unless we in- 
 clude in the working, and as its most essential 
 and noble effort, end, and achievement, to be 
 the satisfaction, and growth and elevation of the 
 rational life that is in man. And respect for 
 reality as the embodiment and revealer of truth 
 to man is the spirit which characterizes and crowns 
 man's rationality. 
 
 "Falsehood," said Aristotle, "is in itself base 
 and censurable: truth is noble and laudable." 
 But is not this the rule or motto only for the man 
 of science or the gentleman? "The man who 
 rings the bell cannot march in the procession:" 
 and as the Ojis have a saying, "When a poor man 
 makes a proverb it does not spread." And just 
 now is the atmosphere so loaded with the poison 
 of lying — diplomatic, economic, political, strat- 
 egic, and in the regions of ethics and theology 
 — that one cannot get even a whiff of it without 
 danger of asphyxiation. 
 
 "O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O World, 
 To be direct and honest, is not safe." 
 
 But which one of the liars in any form would 
 venture to affirm: "I have lost all regard for 
 truth in any form; a lie is as honorable and 
 worthy of my rational nature as is the truth?" 
 further as to this characteristic which I have 
 
 [ 127 ] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 called a "natural respect for Reality," as con- 
 tributing to the answer to the question. What is 
 it to be a person? must be left for consideration 
 in another place. 
 
 No reality is ever known as hare reality. Only 
 particular realities are known; and from their 
 qualities, changes, and varying relations are 
 inferred, by processes of reasoning already suffi- 
 ciently described, the general laws and principles 
 which are said to regulate their behavior. But 
 all these concrete objects of knowledge, whether 
 things or selves, and whether known by self- 
 consciousness, sense-perception, or by inference, 
 or even when asserted in the wildest flights of 
 speculation, the dreams of natural sleep, or the 
 ravings of the madhouse, agree in having certain 
 common characteristics, and in standing in cer- 
 tain relations which are shared by them all. 
 This looser kind of unity is the minimum re- 
 quirement for their being known as belonging to 
 the world of reality. The real world, with its 
 actual or imaginary transactions, differs enor- 
 mously in its size, and in the details of its con- 
 stitution, as known by different individual minds. 
 It may be a world which does not exist, except in 
 untrained imagination, beyond the not far dis- 
 tant mountain range or sea-coast; it may be 
 the world of the traveller who has visited many 
 foreign countries and gone many times around 
 the globe; it may be the world of the astronomer 
 who has probed the heavens' depths with the 
 
 [128] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 most skilful use of the most approved modern 
 methods: but in all these essential respects, 
 every man's world is like every other man's 
 world. All the things in this world have quali- 
 ties and modes of behavior; — some like and some 
 unlike the other neighboring things. All are 
 subject to certain changes, both in space and 
 time. In effecting these changes, many of them 
 seem to have great and special influence over 
 each other. Many of them plainly are adapted 
 to certain ends, perhaps to several different ends. 
 Some of them are good for man; some are bad; 
 many of them seem quite indifferent to his in- 
 terests in any way. Many of them exhibit signs 
 of that progressive and regulated change which is 
 called growth; and these seem to be especially 
 dependent on certain features of their ancestral 
 origin. In many cases they serve the uses of 
 one another; in many other cases, they are 
 plainly prejudicial to one another. In not a few 
 cases one kind of thing continues to exist only as 
 it destroys some other kind of thing. It is a 
 strange jumble of facts, this world, be it large or 
 small, into which the individual man is thrown 
 by birth, and in which he can survive and thrive 
 only if he masters, by the use of his rational 
 powers, at least some primary truths as to the 
 real nature of other beings than himself and the 
 methods of their behavior. 
 
 Every concrete thing in the world must con- 
 form to the general terms of man's rationality, 
 
 [129] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 whether it belong within the fields of the specialist 
 in science, or to the humblest domains of daily 
 experience; and in this respect there is no differ- 
 ence between the two, — in order even to be 
 conceived of as real. Everything in the real 
 world has some qualities, or modes of behavior, 
 that are its very own. It has a "nature"; and 
 its nature reveals itself to reason through these 
 qualities, by these modes of behavior. Every 
 real thing has a certain more or less clearly dis- 
 tinguishable limit of size and duration. It may 
 be relatively large or small, long enduring, or 
 quickly passing; it may be now here and the 
 next instant or century in some other place; 
 it may disappear by instantaneous explosion, or 
 it may slowly, and even quite imperceptibly, 
 fade away. But it must exist in space and in 
 time; it must occupy some time and some space. 
 Still more obvious, if this were possible, is it that 
 every real thing must stand in one or more dis- 
 coverable relations to other things, both near and 
 distant, in both time and space, in order that it 
 may be known at all. For the intellect is essen- 
 tially a relating activity, and the unrelated is 
 the imknown and unknowable, the non-existent 
 for the reason of man. No act of imagination 
 or conjecture can bring the unrelated within the 
 compass of the human intellect. 
 
 The meaning for reality of all these terms is 
 the problem for metaphysical analysis and specu- 
 lation. What it really is, to "have qualities 
 
 [130] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 and quantity," "to exist in time and space," 
 "to stand in relations" of any sort, "to change 
 oneself and to change others" in the character of 
 these relations, are the profoundest problems for 
 reflective thinking to undertake. And that the 
 human mind can undertake such problems and 
 make some shift at partially answering them; 
 yes, even that the human mind can raise such 
 problems, is the most convincing evidence, and 
 the severest test, of the rationality that is the 
 crowning glory of man's intellectual life. i 
 
 A treatise in metaphysics is not, for its own 
 sake, our present particular concern. This is, 
 the rather, to poiat out the notable fact that the 
 respect for reality which is shown by the human 
 reason extends to the ways in which reason 
 conceives of the general terms under which real- 
 ity reveals itself. The phenomena imply reality 
 in an inevitable way, and as an essentially in- 
 contestable belief. But they do more than that. 
 The varied phenomena imply with the same in- 
 evitableness, and in the form of the same incon- 
 testable belief, various kinds of realities actually 
 existing in various relations, and frequently or 
 constantly changing these relations. Out of the 
 phenomena, every man's observations and re- 
 flective consciousness construct a loose concep- 
 tion of a unity of a world of things and other 
 selves which stands over against the unity of his 
 own Self; and to this world he attaches the ver- 
 ity that arises, as of necessity, from reason's 
 
 [131] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 respect for reality. All the sciences do the same 
 thing in more extended, profoundly critical, and 
 carefully guarded ways. The world which the 
 sciences present to our intellects and to our imag- 
 inations is a far grander and more complicated 
 and mysterious world. But it receives from the 
 men of science the same faith in man's rational 
 powers; and it is presented to us, who are not 
 men of science, or at least have no claim to be 
 men knowing the whole imiverse in terms of 
 the particular sciences, as a claimant for the 
 belief which gives evidence of reason's respect 
 for reality. 
 
 We have said that the crowning glory of the 
 rational nature which gives one phase of the 
 complete answer to the question: What is it to 
 be a person? iu so far as the more purely intellec- 
 tual processes are concerned, is reason's power 
 of self-criticism. It is what Immanuel Kant 
 made it his life-work to develop in his so-called 
 "Critique of Pure Reason." Stated in another 
 way: It is the problem of the so-called "Cate- 
 gories." By the term, "the Categories," meta- 
 physical philosophy understands those forms of 
 knowledge under which man knows everything 
 which he knows, even also, what he thinks he 
 knows. The exact number of the categories has 
 been a matter of dispute from the treatment 
 given to the subject in Aristotle's "First Prin- 
 ciples" down to the present time. In the Oriental 
 reflective thinking, the whole doctrine of these 
 
 [132] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 first principles takes a different turn from that 
 given to it by the Western, and especially the 
 modern scientific mind. To the practical mind 
 of the "West, the conclusion that the whole World 
 of things and selves is Illusion (Maya) is not 
 congenial. To a large part of the modern scien- 
 tific world, the doctrine of the categories is not 
 worth disputing about. But surely, the truth 
 of the assumption that science in some manner, 
 and to some degree, is a collection of truths, 
 rather than a bunch of delusions, and that the 
 picture of the Universe which it is constantly 
 tending more and more completely and accu- 
 rately to present, bears some resemblance to 
 the real Universe, is something worth defending; 
 if by any means which themselves have respect 
 to the facts of experience, such a truth is 
 defensible. 
 
 In the disputes which are perennial between 
 two schools in Epistemology, or the Theory of 
 Knowledge, and which logically lead to funda- 
 mental differences in Metaphysics, or the Theory 
 of Reality, the same extreme and one-sided views 
 are noticeable that distinguish the psychology 
 of the cognitive powers. With one school, the 
 categories, or necessary forms of the knowledge 
 of things, their nature, relations, and ways of 
 behavior, and so the entire constitution of the 
 Universe, originate in the nature of reason itself. 
 Our knowledge of everything in the World, and 
 of the constitution of the World, is due solely 
 
 [133] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 to a compulsion, or a weakness of reason. What 
 is real; and what sort of a World the World really 
 is, — Why, about this we can never know any- 
 thing, or hope to know anything. The bird 
 cannot fly above the air that sustains it. The 
 greyhound cannot, by running the faster, out- 
 strip his own shadow. These forms of knowl- 
 edge, which dictate for us the forms of reality, 
 are only the inborn nature of a way of construing 
 phenomena, which does not depend upon the 
 nature of reality, and can never lead us to the 
 knowledge, or even to the defensible conjecture 
 as to what reality, so to say, really is. 
 
 The other school of theorists, if it can be called 
 a "School," explains the origin and character of 
 the categories by the passive reaction of human 
 reason to the impressions made upon it by the 
 things themselves. Reason itself is, to use a 
 technical but rather meaningless word, an "epi- 
 phenomenon." The real World would be and 
 would behave in the way in which it now exists 
 and behaves, if there were no reason anywhere 
 in the World. The phenomenon of rationality 
 is epi, — or something in the way of phenomena 
 that is over and beyond, in the meaning of being 
 entirely superfluous to all reality. 
 
 Now both these views are unsatisfactory; 
 not only because they lay no foundations for 
 our confidence in any form of truth, but also 
 because when we pursue them in their conse- 
 quences to the last result, they end in absurdity. 
 
 [134] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 For if, on the one hand, human reason has no 
 ground in the reality of things and of thing-like 
 selves, that are not my individual Self, then all 
 the faith which underlies knowledge is under- 
 mined. My assumption of rationality for my- 
 self is inseparably connected with the faith in 
 a common reason possessed by others than my- 
 self, that cannot possibly be manifested to me 
 through self-consciousness alone. But if I and 
 all others who have faith in the convictions and 
 knowledges of the common reason are simply 
 compelled, in total impotency, to be the records of 
 irrational things; and if our reason has no power 
 superior to the impressions themselves, to criti- 
 cise them and from them derive a knowledge of 
 what the World really is; then science itself, 
 and all claims to every form and degree of 
 knowledge, become doubly epi-phenomenal. The 
 physical and natural sciences have become the 
 epi-phenomena of an epi-phenomenon. 
 
 Now either of these conclusions is a sorry affair. 
 To proclaim it as the result of rational procedure 
 is a performance more absurd than the contor- 
 tions of any clown iu a circus. The laughter 
 which it excites is scornful and bitter; it is not 
 the laughter of merriment, or of that delightful 
 sort to which the triumphs of the intellect lead 
 the healthy mind. 
 
 To point out the fallibility of man's reason is 
 easy, in the detailed beliefs of science as well as 
 of religion. To say that the procedure of reason 
 
 [135] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 in the development of knowledge is "anthro- 
 pomorphic" is to state a self-evident proposi- 
 tion. As a matter of course, man has no other 
 way of knowing things than the way common to 
 all men. The way of every individual man is, 
 in respect of the categories, the way of all men. 
 But there is one assumption which, like a sleep- 
 ing but universal and necessary hypothesis, 
 underlies all human knowledge, whether the so- 
 called scientific, or otherwise. It is not an hy- 
 pothesis derived from our individual experiences, 
 though it may be confirmed and cleared of lin- 
 guistic obscurities by reflection upon the signifi- 
 cance of these experiences. The hypothesis is 
 this. Man's Self, the person, and all the things 
 which are the objects of his knowledge, have the same 
 rationality in them. This is the secret which 
 justifies our respect for reality, — not only that 
 it is, but also what it is. Things could not be 
 shaped into realities by our minds, if they were 
 not in their very nature shaped by mind other than 
 ourselves. To share in Universal Reason is to be 
 a person, a rational animal. It is such sharing 
 which guarantees all human knowledge. 
 
 We are not concerned now about the impor- 
 tance of this truth, with its invincible convictions, 
 for theology and for laying the intellectual foun- 
 dations of the religious life. We are concerned 
 for the salvation of man's claims to rationality, 
 and to valid knowledge, and to foundations in 
 reality for his science and his social life. 
 
 [136] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 Just how these universal forms of rationality 
 work in practice, and from what special activi- 
 ties of the Self they, each one, take their rise, 
 must, with one exception, be left to the theory of 
 reality, as the result of psychological study and 
 metaphysical criticism. The one exception to 
 which brief reference will be made is the concep- 
 tion of Causation. 
 
 Things are known only as related to each other; 
 and closer observation — but only so close as 
 every one is compelled to make to some good 
 degree — shows that the changes in some of these 
 relations have a special bond connecting the 
 things that change. To the observer the changes 
 are phenomena; but the observer, being rational, 
 and having reason's respect for reality, must as- 
 sign them to real things. Any observed peculiar 
 relation of one thing to another in respect of their 
 changes, whether simultaneous or sequent, is 
 also phenomenal. But reason's respect for real- 
 ity bids in this case, too, that we assign the phe- 
 nomenon to something working in the things 
 themselves. They influence each other; but 
 the influence is not mere persuasion; it is not 
 merely of the social kind. The quality which 
 no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, and 
 no modification of the senses can ever hope to 
 reach, as existent in things, we call Force. It is 
 this quality, not discoverable as an outside phe- 
 nomenon, which, however, accoxmts for the 
 compulsion that some things exercise over other 
 
 [137] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 things, to the generalized conception of which 
 we give the name of Causation. The more or 
 less regular ways in which things manifest this 
 kind of influence, when generalized to the fullest 
 extent, we call the Law or Principle of Causality. 
 And then, if we venture upon the unwarrantable 
 procedure of applying the same conception to 
 all changes and events in the whole world, of both 
 men and things, we boast our knowledge of the 
 universal Reign of Law; — too often, unfortu- 
 nately, for our claim to a cultivated and well- 
 rounded development of rationality, with its 
 tender regard, as shown in cherishing the "truth 
 for its own sake " — in the sense proper alone to 
 the physical and chemical sciences. 
 
 But whence comes this conception of force, if it 
 cannot possibly be discerned by the senses in the 
 phenomena of things? The answer given by 
 some has been to deny that any phenomenon 
 even of the mental life answers to the conception. 
 Such an answer would reduce it to mere observed 
 sequences in the past, and to expectation of 
 similar sequences in the future. But in truth, 
 no observation of similar regular sequences in 
 the past is necessary to evoke the most convin- 
 cing experiences with this conception, the most 
 tremendous instances of its application to the 
 changes between and among things. I do not 
 need to have witnessed several explosions of the 
 can from which kerosene is being poured upon 
 the live coals of the fire, in order to recognize 
 
 [138] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 the causal linking of the forces which the care- 
 lessness or ignorance of the servant has evoked 
 to her own ruin. The soldier does not need to 
 have his arm torn off more than once for a dem- 
 onstration of the force that was in the piece of 
 shrapnel that wounded him. But suppose that 
 he preserves the offending metal as a trophy and, 
 on returning home, submits it to experts for ex- 
 amination. Will their microscope or chemical 
 analysis ever come upon any of that so-called 
 "force"? Moreover, to declare that regularity 
 of sequence and expectation are all there is, to 
 account in terms of consciousness for the con- 
 ception of causation and of force inherent in 
 things as at the root of causation, is only to de- 
 clare what is not true when tested by the facts 
 of man's consciousness. 
 
 It is not from any quality inherent in things 
 as known from the point of view of their time- 
 relations, that this group of the assumptions 
 which underlie the picture of the Universe as 
 presented by the physical sciences takes its 
 origin or derives its claim to universal applica- 
 tion. To solve this metaphysical problem, which 
 is not a problem so much as a naive uncritical 
 assumption, we must look within the Self. The 
 beginning of its solution, so far as it has a solution, 
 is to be found in the fact that every Self knows 
 itself as a self-active will. As self-active will, 
 the rational personality has experience, in reality, 
 out of which his intellect evolves all the concep- 
 
 [139] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 tions of Force, Cause and Effect, Causation, 
 and the so-called Law or Principle of Universal 
 Causality. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the pleas- 
 ure with which the developing infant recognizes 
 its own forceful and effective will. Its exercises 
 are almost if not quite invariably, however, ac- 
 companied by feelings of effort and of more or 
 less definitely localized strain. It is not neces- 
 sary to enter into the psycho-physics of these 
 feelings. Apparently they are a mixture which 
 has its physiological correlates partly in brain- 
 states that accompany or follow immediately 
 the initial volition, partly in the sensory impulses 
 that come up from the tense areas of skin, the 
 swelling muscles and stiffening tendons, and the 
 changed condition of the internal organs, and 
 that serve to modify or reinforce these initial 
 brain-states. Be this as it may, the result in our 
 conceptions of the significance of the experience, 
 as respects ourselves and the things about which 
 our knowledge grows, remains the same. In 
 knowing ourselves as self-active wills, we know 
 ourselves as having force within ourselves, as 
 being veritable causes of changes in our world 
 of environing things. 
 
 But the other side of resisted effort, the ex- 
 planation that our wills cannot have their way 
 without effort, and often cannot have their way 
 in spite of all our efforts, is the knowledge, vital 
 with a conviction which is founded in reality, 
 
 [140] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 that there are many wills besides our own. These 
 other wills oppose and often thwart our wills. 
 They persistently will what we do not will. They 
 have force residing in them; they, too, are causes 
 which produce effects in us and in one another. 
 
 In all these conscious experiences, with the 
 legitimate inferences from them, fortified and 
 applied to the World of things and selves under 
 the conviction that reason is dealing in a legiti- 
 mate and rational way with realities, there is 
 nothing that contradicts the claim of the person 
 to "moral freedom." Without moral freedom, 
 no being, however mightily self-active, or pro- 
 foundly and acutely intelligent, can make good 
 the title to personality. The nature of moral 
 freedom, as we conceive of it, will be briefly dis- 
 cussed in the following chapter. 
 
 There is, however, a form of the principle of 
 causality, which is thoughtlessly adopted by the 
 physical sciences, and more thoughtlessly but 
 quite fallaciously carried over to the personal life 
 and to all its development, that quite under-mines 
 the claim to moral freedom. This theory in 
 its extreme form holds that all individual beings 
 are, throughout all time, bound together by a 
 chain of causal influences, such that everything 
 and every self that comes into existence, and 
 every change in everything and every deed (even 
 including the choices) of every self, is to be ex- 
 plained, sufficiently and solely, by its position in 
 this chain of causal and therefore compulsory 
 
 [141] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 influences. This metaphysical theory of the 
 world's development, and of the origin and be- 
 havior of every individual being that takes its 
 little part in the whole development, is usually 
 claimed by its advocates to be either indubitably 
 proved by experience, or self-evident and in need 
 of no proof. 
 
 To reflective thinking, this lofty and almost or 
 quite a priori form of determinism is not simply 
 inadequate; it is absurd. For let us consider 
 how science is compelled to explain every event; 
 and not least of all, those which most evidently 
 fall under the terms of its deterministic theory. 
 It enumerates the conditions under which the 
 elements of the complex event come together, 
 and the so-called laws, or regular sequences of 
 such a combination; and it then presents the 
 whole to our minds as a satisfactory account of 
 the event in terms of its causation. But it is 
 no such account; for it is the so-called "nature" 
 of each one of the combining elements which 
 has also a determing voice in what the result shall 
 be. But what do we mean by the "nature" of 
 anything, — personal Self, or only just mere 
 thing? We can answer this question only by 
 observing what the particular thing has done in 
 the past, and what we can discern, or legitimately 
 infer, it to be capable of doing at the present time. 
 Its nature may be statical or developing. It 
 may be conscious, in any one of many degrees 
 and in several different kinds; or it may be, so 
 
 [142] 
 
THE PERSON AS RATIONAL 
 
 far as we can discover, although plainly pur- 
 poseful in some of its modes of behavior, quite 
 unconscious, or only dimly conscious, throughout 
 them aU. But as soon as we begin to explain 
 the doings of things in definite relations with 
 other things, and leave out of account the native 
 or acquired natures of the things related, our 
 explanation lacks its better half. And as soon 
 as we go on with our explanation by appealing to 
 the "nature of things," we argue in a circle for 
 the concealment of our ignorance at the terminal 
 points of our explanation. Analyze, as we may, 
 the nature of any composite thing into the things 
 which compose it, and we can never reach the 
 limits of the analysis. We illustrate the impotence 
 of intellect in its attempts to get rid of all mystery 
 by its linking tmder compulsion all things together 
 in the endless chain of causation. All explana- 
 tion leads back to the mysterious, the inexplain- 
 able, and therefore the to-be-taken-for-granted 
 without being explained. Oxygen and hydro- 
 gen, under certain conditions of pressure and 
 temperature, have in them the kind of nature, 
 or self -activity — which probably operates without 
 consciousness, though in a plainly purposeful 
 and most benevolent way, to form the com- 
 poimd water. But how explain that nature of 
 oxygen and hydrogen, and the mysterious nature, 
 ultimately considered, of temperature and pres- 
 sure? It is the nature of dogs to bark and bite, 
 — not of all dogs, and at all times. It is the 
 
 [143] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 nature of the Russell's viper to hiss and strike; 
 but not necessarily, and usually not, without being 
 provoked. Even the lower animals, under the 
 influence of inner motive forces, sometimes do 
 what it is not according to their nature to do. 
 This proves that their deeds of will are seemingly 
 influenced by motives. And influence by motives 
 is not the same thing as physical causation, es- 
 pecially of the strictly deterministic type. 
 
 It is the nature of the person to choose; and, 
 equally so, to have for his motives certain ideas, 
 sentiments, and a certain development of self- 
 activity, of which the animals do not seem to 
 be capable. And if there are ultimate and insol- 
 uble mysteries connected with the "nature" of 
 personality, the evidence for the actuality of 
 this nature is not impaired by such a fact. For 
 the nature of a person is to be rational; and the 
 very centre and source of personal reason is in the 
 mysterious fact of a self -determining will. 
 
 [144] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 TEE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 'ITHIN certain limits the words 
 "reasonable" and "rational" may 
 be correctly used as interchange- 
 able terms. And yet we do not mean precisely 
 the same thing when we say, one to another: 
 "You are not reasonable;" and "You are not 
 rational." The former charge might imply sim- 
 ply a fault in one's logic, or logical understand- 
 ing, the discursive reason, which makes man 
 capable of learning and of scientific achievements 
 as the lower animals are not. The latter word 
 would involve a much graver charge. To be 
 unreasonable may be only a symptom of 
 mental but momentary disarrangement, a failure 
 to examine one's premises or to observe those 
 laws of the syllogism which provide for a way of 
 linking them in together that is satisfactory to 
 the critical use of the intellect. But if you are 
 fairly by a good judge pronounced irrational, 
 you are afflicted with a chronic disease, from which 
 you must recover, or be denied the claim to be 
 fit for conduct touching the interests of other 
 persons; or — for that matter — unfit to care 
 for your own personal interests. This disease, 
 
 [145] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 if not cured, may consign one to the asylum for 
 the insane, or even to social perdition. 
 
 The explanation of this partial agreement and 
 partial difference in the two words is to be found 
 in the fact that, although the meanings do not 
 quite overlap, they both have acquired two 
 somewhat distinct spheres of their application. 
 To be reasonable — constitutionally and habitu- 
 ally so — is to have the capacity, native or ac- 
 quired, for framing certain moral, sesthetical, 
 and religious ideals, of which the lower animals 
 show few, if any, traces. But the word "rational- 
 ity" is an "abstract collective term" which is 
 intended to include all these ideals, and the sen- 
 timents and activities of thought and imagina- 
 tion in which the ideals originate, as well as the 
 manner of life which realizes them. 
 
 In English philosophy, it was Coleridge who 
 fought for this use of the word reason as involv- 
 ing capacities and activities much beyond those 
 which could be attributed to the intellect con- 
 sidered as the faculty of man's superior power of 
 discursive reasoning. To quote a passage from 
 the Friend (Works, Vol. II, p. 144): "I should 
 have no objection to define reason with Jacobi 
 ... as an organ bearing the same relation to 
 spiritual objects, the universal, the eternal, and 
 the necessary, as the eye bears to material and 
 contingent phenomena." This conception of the 
 rationality of the person, man, is too vague and 
 figurative to be of much scientific or practical 
 
 [146] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 use. But it suggests the important truth that 
 no rational Hfe is possible, no personal develop- 
 ment can take place, without moral consciousness 
 and moral freedom. It follows, then, that our 
 search after an answer to the question, What is 
 it to be a person? and even much more our quest 
 after the secret of personality, can meet with no 
 success unless some account is taken of the springs 
 and principles of man's moral life. 
 
 To anticipate the finding by a preliminary 
 word: The "respect for reality" which supports 
 and guarantees the value of truth, and so the 
 integrity of the foundations of science and of all 
 manner of social intercourse, is itself really a 
 moral affair. He who has it not, or fails habit- 
 ually to observe it in the conduct of his affairs, 
 is not a good person. But he who trains himself 
 to an habitual fidelity to this feeling, inherent in 
 the very constitution of rationality, is, in this 
 respect, a good man. And fidelity to the truth is 
 a virtue which draws after it a group of other 
 virtues. 
 
 The sources of the personal life in its ethical 
 aspect are described by Lord Shaftesbury in 
 quaint language as follows: "In a Creature cap- 
 able of forming General Notions of things, not 
 only the outward Beings which offer themselves 
 to the Sense, are the Objects of Affection; but 
 the very Actions themselves, and the Affections 
 of Pity, Kindness, Gratitude, and their Con- 
 trarys, being brought into the Mind by Reflec- 
 
 [147] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 tion, become Objects. So that, by means of this 
 reflected Sense, there arises another kind of 
 Affection toward those very Affections themselves, 
 which have been already felt, and are now be- 
 come the Subject of a new Liking or Dislike." 
 
 Of the "Affections" to which the passage just 
 quoted refers, the most primary and, in its de- 
 veloped form the most comprehensive, is called 
 the consciousness of obligation. As feeling, and 
 considered apart from the judgment to which it 
 becomes attached, I have ventured elsewhere 
 to give it the uncouth term, "The Feeling of the 
 Ought." ^ For, whatever we may decide as to 
 the relative priority of feeling and judgment in 
 the moral consciousness, and as to the relative 
 value of the two in the determination of duty 
 and the doctrine of the virtues, and as to the 
 philosophy of ethics, the distinction must be 
 recognized as of great importance, between one's 
 feeling that I ought, and one's judgment as to 
 what I ought. We hold that the former is inher- 
 ent in the rational nature of the normal individ- 
 ual person, as a spontaneous expression of his 
 rationality; but that the latter, like all other 
 general judgments, depends upon the exercise 
 of the reasoning powers, as subject however to 
 the influences of heredity, environment, — es- 
 pecially, the social, — education, and the habits 
 of wUl formed under all these influences. Only 
 
 ' For a full discussion of this subject, see the author's " Philosophy 
 of Conduct," Chapter VI; and "What Ought I to do?" Chapter II. 
 
 [148] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 by holding fast to this important distinction can 
 we reconcile the conflict between those who assert 
 for every man an infallible intuition of what is 
 right, what wrong, in any of the several forms 
 given to the conception of an infallible intuition, 
 and those who point to the notable differences 
 and even oppositions of moral judgment which 
 have characterized all generations and stages 
 in the course of human moral development. In 
 a word: "The feeling of the ought" is primary, 
 essential, unique; the judgments as to what one 
 ought are the result of environment, education, and 
 reflection. 
 
 It must be confessed that the proof of the state- 
 ment just made cannot be got from an appeal 
 to the reflective self-consciousness of the morally 
 developed person. He has long ago come to 
 himself in such a way that feeling and judgment 
 are indistinguishably blended in his attitude 
 toward certain states of mind, called motives, 
 in himself and others; and to certain kinds of 
 conduct. He does not need to make up his 
 mind, either by argument or by asking other 
 persons, as to the right or wrong in these mat- 
 ters. The blend of mental components has the 
 quality of immediacy which is one of the tests of 
 a so-called intuition. He can truthfully say, 
 with about equal evidence and emphasis of con- 
 viction, either " I feel that I ought" (or ought 
 not) and "I know that I ought" (or ought not). 
 With certain Kamchatkans and Mongolians, 
 
 [149] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 however, the same feeUngs of approval spon- 
 taneously arise toward deeds of theft, adultery, 
 and murder; but they also think that he who 
 scrapes snow from his shoes with a knife, or lays 
 iron in the fire, or strikes his horse with the rein, 
 verily ought to be punished with death. 
 
 In most cases, long before the reflective con- 
 sciousness has developed far enough to make the 
 experience fit for storing in the permanent memo- 
 ries of childhood, an emotional disturbance has 
 taken place which, although it is nearly always 
 accompanied or followed by feelings of either 
 pleasure or pain, is not itself a mere feeling of 
 either pleasure or pain. It is a feeling of repulsion 
 or attraction based upon another kind of distinc- 
 tions in conduct, its quality and its consequences, 
 rather than its connection with the individual's 
 pleasures or pains. It soon shows its power to 
 bind the will to ideas and acts of a different and 
 higher kind of value. In most cases, it is prob- 
 ably first awakened as a feeling of repulsion to- 
 ward some form of gratification opposed to the 
 social customs that lie closest to the daily life. 
 The child can learn his "better-not" by lonely 
 experiment with the tail of a snappish dog, or the 
 flame of a burning candle. He learns his "ought- 
 not" by trying to appropriate his brother's toy; 
 or by disobeying his mother's command as to the 
 contents of the sugar-bowl. He may even learn 
 it through failure to turn over to his "pals" 
 the due proportion of his "pickings and steal- 
 
 [150] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 ings." In the latter case, too, the feehng of the 
 value of honesty and fairness, though only in a 
 sadly limited way, attaches itself to the social 
 effects of following without discrimination one's 
 impulses toward what it is pleasant to have under 
 selfish control. Soon after, if not simultaneously, 
 the feeling of the ought in its positive and agree- 
 able form is born within the personal life. Re- 
 specting some rights, doing some fair things, obey- 
 ing some one's commands, and even courage and 
 skill as virtuous ways of committing all manner 
 of crimes, are rewarded with social approval which 
 may be expressed in any one of many dififerent 
 ways. A word, a smile, a pat upon the back, or a 
 stick of candy, may in the earlier stages of moral 
 development serve the purpose of exhortation and 
 of careful instruction in the principles of right 
 and wrong conduct. 
 
 But why have we ventured to characterize this 
 emotion which answers to the developed feeling 
 of obligation, the doctrine of the virtues, and the 
 theory as to the ultimate nature of the morally 
 right, as something unique in man, — an emo- 
 tion which in its simplest form cannot be aroused 
 in a merely animal consciousness. The Japanese 
 have a proverb which may be liberally inter- 
 preted somewhat as follows: "The bamboo 
 shows its noble character from the first shoot 
 as it springs from the ground." The bamboo 
 is therefore the type of what the son of a true 
 samurai ought to be. Not a few species of ani- 
 
 [151] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 mals have exceedingly elaborate specific and 
 tribal customs which are quite rigidly enforced 
 upon their own members, and against all attacks 
 from their enemies. But they show no suffi- 
 cient signs of that reflective consciousness, or 
 those powers of intellect and imagination, or of 
 that organized and rationalized social struc- 
 ture, with its infinite capacity for development, 
 that bear witness to the unique moral personal- 
 ity of man. In the development of the social 
 life of the most intelligent of the animals, there- 
 fore, we miss all the rational elements of man's 
 moral life. We are only judging the tree by its 
 fruits, when we declare that in its roots and 
 sprouts, and in the grafts, it has the qualities 
 which its fruits display in their maturer form. 
 
 As we have already said, education and re- 
 flection develop in different individuals star- 
 tlingly different judgments as to what deeds of 
 will are right, what wrong, and therefore valid 
 claimants for respect as principles of the moral 
 life. And yet all persons have its essentials in 
 common, and as necessary to their being per- 
 sons in any true and full meaning -of the word. 
 I have known the Jain poHtely to excuse himself 
 that he might take his evening meal before the 
 darkness would compel him to breathe in or drink 
 some invisible form of vermin life; and the Eng- 
 lish milord boast of how many score of highly 
 organized lives he had done to death in a single 
 day's sport. I have heard a learned and honored 
 
 [152] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 chief-justice of one of the Provinces of India 
 boast that he considered it his duty daily to 
 drink the water in which his mother had washed 
 her feet; and the poor drunken thief of a woman 
 sob out her heart-felt confession of guilt, when 
 the judge of a police-court in the City of Edin- 
 burgh asked her: "How could you be so mean 
 as to steal that poor old woman's only petticoat?" 
 Yet all were of kindred moral nature with the 
 saints and the Apostles. 
 
 There are other emotions than the feeling of 
 obligation which play an important or essential 
 part in the make-up of man as a moral person. 
 For the most part, if not exclusively, these are 
 such emotions as are aroused by things and ideas 
 that have value. Some of them are more dis- 
 tinctively ethical in their character; but some 
 resemble rather the feelings with which human 
 reason greets the beautiful in nature and in art; 
 and some there are which closely counterfeit the 
 most profound of the religious emotions. For 
 the good man has a Godlike character; and in 
 saying this we draw near to the secret of personal- 
 ity and the explanation of the ultimate goal and 
 supreme value of the personal life. 
 
 The most distinctive of the other more def- 
 initely ethical feelings that constitute the person 
 as moral, and so equipped to become a member 
 of a society of persons, is the so-called "feeling of 
 merit." Of this feeling the description given by 
 the late Professor Bowne is excellent. "Merit is 
 
 [153] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 the desert of moral approval and the right to be 
 rewarded accordingly." This emotion looks in 
 two directions. It is a feeling of a right to assert 
 a claim; it is also a feeling of a right to perform a 
 duty. Its syllogism runs in somewhat the follow- 
 ing way: If ^ is a good man, he has a right to be 
 universally approved; and it is the duty of other 
 men from B to X to approve him. It, indeed, lies 
 at the foundations of social order as a moral affair; 
 but it does not contradict the moral wisdom of 
 the typically good man, who is good " not for the 
 sake of gaining heaven or of escaping hell." 
 
 "Thanks to men 
 Of noble minds is honorable meed." 
 
 The whole social order, as an affair of morals, 
 depends upon this feeling of merit due to the 
 man who lives up to the feeling of obligation. 
 He is the "good man" in war or in peace, in some 
 one of the many relations which he must sustain 
 to his fellow men, or in a general all-round way. 
 "He ought to have" what he does not generally 
 get, the reward of appreciation by all rational 
 persons; it is not right that he should be deprived 
 of it by any one of them. And when he exhibits 
 some of the virtues in a way so marked as to par- 
 take of heroism, the feeling of approbation takes 
 on all the characteristics of an sesthetical emo- 
 tion. Others are impressed with feelings of ad- 
 miration similar to those with which one looks 
 off from Observation Hill upon Kinchinjinga 
 and the surrounding Himalayas. This emotion 
 
 [154] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 is purifying to those who feel it; or, to use the 
 phrase of the Hindu religious philosophy, it 
 "washes away one's sins." Again, the emotions 
 aroused by heroic virtues, or by a life, however 
 humble otherwise, that is able to overcome with 
 patience and endurance the obstacles to right 
 living have distinctly the characteristics of re- 
 ligious awe. "I take oflf my hat" to such a man, 
 is the common fellow's way of expressing this 
 emotion. The great philosopher who has general- 
 ized the objects to which the feeling of obligation is 
 naturally due, aflarms that the "moral law within" 
 and the "starry heavens without" awaken in him 
 the same feeling of boundless admiration. 
 
 Feelings like those just described do, in fact, 
 make an appeal to the will of every person who 
 has a normal moral consciousness. They are 
 essential endowments of his ethical personality; 
 essential moving powers and guides to his moral 
 development. He who has them not is either a 
 sort of monstrosity, or a radically defective person. 
 
 But all this appeal to the will, even when rein- 
 forced by the utmost wisdom to be gained from 
 experience, woidd not succeed in effecting the 
 creation or the development of a truly personal 
 life, if the will — regarded as the summary of 
 man's native and acquired self-activity — were 
 not possessed of moral freedom. Reference has 
 already been made to the fallacy of an a priori 
 and metaphysical theory of determinism as ap- 
 plied to man, — his conduct and his character. 
 
 [155] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Not even things are compelled by other things 
 to act in "regular" ways, irrespective of their 
 own nature. But it is man's nature, as a person 
 and so far different from any known or conceiv- 
 able thing, to act with respect to motives, and 
 to choose between and among these motives. 
 This nature of his is known, and can only be 
 known, as the so-called nature of every being 
 is known, by its fruits. Thus known, it ends 
 indeed in ultimate mystery; but it leads to the 
 acceptance of indubitable facts. We cannot, 
 therefore, agree with the German philosopher 
 Riehl: "Morality is the cognitive ground of 
 Determinism, while Determinism is the real 
 ground of Morality;" or with the Dutch psy- 
 chologist Hoffding: "Psychology . . . must start 
 from the assumption that the causal law holds 
 good even in the life of the will, just as this law 
 is assumed to be valid for the remaining con- 
 scious life and for material nature." On the 
 contrary, both philosophy and psychology must 
 start from, and stick to, the evidence of the facts 
 of life; and in this case, the facts are especially 
 those that appertain to the self-conscious self- 
 activity of the person as moral. These and other 
 assumptions of Determinism cannot fitly be met 
 with the calmly measured declaration of Mr. 
 Sidgwick "as to the practical unimportance of 
 the Free Will controversy." But neither can 
 they be satisfactorily met by setting up the plea 
 that we (and here the "we" can be only equiva- 
 [156] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 lent to an "I," for my part; since no individual 
 can intuitively avow the consciousness of an- 
 other), know that we are free by an immediate, 
 self-conscious, and therefore — all argument to 
 the contrary, notwithstanding — invincible proof, 
 which no form of science can overthrow or weaken. 
 On the contrary, every one who will reflect upon 
 his own conduct and the motives which influence 
 it, may easily know that there are numerous limits 
 to one's so-called freedom of will, and many de- 
 grees of the attainment of this freedom. For 
 in this respect, as in all other forms of the de- 
 velopment of personal life, different individuals 
 come to themselves in differing ways and to 
 different extents; and there are still not a few 
 who give no evidence of having come to their 
 better selves in any way or to any extent. It is 
 only the moral heroes who can truthfully declare 
 with Browning's "Paracelsus": 
 
 'I have subdued my life to the one purpose 
 Whereto I ordained it;" 
 
 or, agam: 
 
 "I have made my life consist of one idea." 
 
 But this degree of exalted self-control is by no 
 means necessary for some moral freedom and for a 
 corresponding moral responsibihty. 
 
 The very contrary of the declaration that the 
 law of causation appUes to man's conscious life 
 as it applies to material nature is strictly true. 
 Causation, as the physical sciences interpret its 
 application for material nature, never once ap- 
 
 [157] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 plies to man's conscious life. Things do not 
 reach the centre of man's personality, the self- 
 conscious will, — not even his own thing-like 
 body, — until they have awakened states in 
 the self-conscious life itself. Gold and fame are 
 nothing to the will, either as attractive or re- 
 pulsive, or even so as to be regarded with indiffer- 
 ence, until feelings of greed, or ambition, or ennui, 
 or their opposites, are aroused. The rack is 
 nothing to the culprit or the martyr, until its 
 torturing pain is felt, and so the will is appealed 
 to hold on to, or to let go, its formative or already 
 formed decision. It is the pain and not the rack, 
 that influences the will. Either culprit or martyr, 
 under the influence of that torturing pain, may 
 be brought to feeling: "I can endure no longer." 
 The thief or murderer may be brought to the 
 conclusion: "It is not worth while to refuse be- 
 yond this limit of endurance." Then we say, 
 using an impressive figure of speech, that his 
 confession was "wrung" from him {i.e. his will), 
 as water is wrung from cloth with loose meshes, 
 or as blood is literally wrung from his suffering 
 body. But the idea of the moral value of stead- 
 fastness in faith may make the martyr scorn to 
 weaken his will that is set in the determination 
 to keep that faith until the end. The thought 
 that it is mean to betray his partner in crime 
 may do the same thing for the thief or the mur- 
 derer. The soldier who has fought a rear-guard 
 action for two days, without food or relief, may 
 [158] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 fall as one dead upon the ground with all the 
 will to live and desire to do his manful duty 
 taken out of him. He cannot will to march and 
 fight any more. The feeling of exhaustion has 
 mastered his will. But the voice of his oflBcer, 
 or the call of the bugle, may arouse the ideas 
 and feelings to which the will freely responds; 
 the soldier staggers to his feet, and fights on for 
 another night and day. It is not the vibrations 
 of the air caused by the oflicer's voice or the 
 call of the bugle, or even the imaginary vibrations 
 of the nervous system provoked at the end of 
 the physical series, that causes the conscious 
 and deliberate or only dimly conscious altera- 
 tion in the direction of the person's self-activity. 
 It is the meaning, the significance as expressed 
 in states of ideation and emotion, which stands 
 in apparent relation of cause and effect to the 
 reactions of the personal Self. To understand 
 even the phenomenal aspect of all such experi- 
 ences, — the experiences which make up the daily 
 record of every personal life, — the nature of 
 the relation between mental states must be stated 
 in terms to correspond with experienced facts. 
 Thus stated, — we repeat, — the relation differs 
 in most essential ways from that of the concep- 
 tion of causation between things as applied by 
 the physical sciences to material nature. 
 
 In order, then, to connect the will of man with 
 natural forces in the manner, and under the laws 
 that control the changing relations of things, 
 
 [159] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 three assumptions have to be made, two of which 
 are highly conjectural, the other demonstrably 
 false. The states of the nervous system must 
 be unconditionally caused by external influences, 
 in the form of sensory impulses. The successive 
 mental states — thoughts, emotions, desires — 
 must be unconditionally caused by the states of 
 the nervous system, especially by the brain states. 
 All the decisions and deeds of wiU so-called must 
 have themselves linked together under the laws 
 of causation, so that they follow each other with 
 an intensity and in an order strictly determined 
 by the mental states. But physiology has by 
 no means been able to explain the nature of man's 
 nervous system, and especially of the cerebral 
 hemispheres of the brain, so as to make its be- 
 havior such a one-sided affair. There is about 
 as good evidence that its behavior is determined 
 by the states of consciousness as there is to con- 
 nect it in a strictly deterministic way with natural 
 forces outside the bodily organism. Again, to 
 make brain-states the causes of states of con- 
 sciousness in a manner corresponding to that in 
 which changing states of things are causes of 
 each other, is not only — as I have just said — 
 a highly conjectural assumption, but to many 
 thinkers it seems so inconceivable as to be pal- 
 pably absurd. When we step over the thresh- 
 old of physical phenomena into the domain of 
 consciousness, of however low an order, we seem 
 to be in a quite different world. 
 [160] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 To arrange the states of consciousness under 
 the conception of a causal sequence, in which 
 each preceding state determines its next follow- 
 ing state, is to misconceive and pervert all that 
 we know, as truth of fact, about the constitution 
 and the development of personality. For, in 
 the first place, there are no stages or single per- 
 formances of this life that do not give evidence 
 or a certain seZf-activity. We cannot account 
 fully for anything that a person does without 
 making appeal to the mystery of a nature that 
 manifests itself in this way. For Will is not a 
 special faculty, or ability, that can be in thought 
 or in fact separated off from its vital union with 
 all the other so-called factors that invariably and 
 momently cooperate in the currents of the on- 
 flowing stream of personal life. We speak, in- 
 deed, of will being influenced, or even compelled, 
 by motives; but we can just as truly, and often 
 more illuminingly, speak of motives as influenced 
 or determined by the will. The will of any per- 
 sonal Self is the person regarded as self-active. 
 This distinction is not for the distinguished only; 
 though different persons are distinguished by its 
 possession in different degrees. It is the centre 
 of all that distinguishes the personal nature of 
 man from the nature of the lower animals. 
 
 The culminating activity of personal, moral 
 freedom is Choice. "When we say," declares 
 Aristotle, "this is chosen or proposed, we mean 
 that it has been selected after deliberation." 
 
 [161] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Now there is good psychological ground for 
 agreeing with M. Paulhan when he says: "Every 
 idea . . . every sentiment, in brief every psychic 
 system, tends to complete itself by volitions 
 and motor phenomena; every system has its 
 own will." But the moral person, whether he 
 be a good or a bad person from the moral point 
 of view, if he is a person in any true meaning of 
 the word, and to any appreciable degree, can 
 deliberate, on due occasion. The infant does it 
 when he pauses before he stretches out his hand 
 toward the forbidden piece of cake, or to grasp 
 the piece of candy which looks the more attrac- 
 tive of the two, one of which has been offered 
 him. Deliberation is itself the conscious inter- 
 position of a check until two or more contending 
 "psychic systems" can have their value esti- 
 mated. Dogs appear to do something of the 
 same sort. But the impassable guK between 
 the canine and the human animal appears when 
 we consider that the former does not seem to de- 
 velop any ideas or sentiments appreciative of 
 distinctly moral values; but it belongs to the 
 essential nature of the person to have sentiments 
 appreciative of moral values and of their binding 
 obligation. Moreover, as a result of develop- 
 ment, these sentiments of obligation and of ap- 
 proval and disapproval have been attached to 
 certain forms of behavior by the social environ- 
 ment, — the culture this nature has received from 
 other beings morally constituted; and then sub- 
 [162] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 jected to a self -reflection that rises far above any- 
 thing possible for the most intelligent of animals. 
 We may say then: "Rational will is the Self re- 
 garded as determining its own conduct with a view 
 to realize the ends that are morally good." ("Philoso- 
 phy of Conduct," p. 153.) It follows that the 
 morally ideal person is a Self voluntarily using 
 its own intelligence to secure the ends of that 
 conduct which is judged to be morally right. 
 
 It is in the phenomenon of Choice, when 
 thoroughly analyzed, that the immediate con- 
 sciousness of what is called "being free" (less 
 fortunately and often in a way to deceive oneself, 
 "having an immediate knowledge of the free- 
 dom of the wUl") comes to its highest and 
 most intelligent expression. Briefly described, the 
 stages are as follows : I am aware of different 
 or conflicting tendencies in the form of impulses, 
 needs, desires, or other forms of so-called "mo- 
 tives," urging me to select one of two or more 
 acts or courses of conduct. But I pause in my 
 volition; I call a halt to decision until I can more 
 carefully estimate the values of these courses, 
 whether by way of happiness, relief from pain or 
 other form of evil, reputation, success, approba- 
 tion of conscience, or other form of good that is 
 likely to follow for myself or others. I weigh 
 the different courses of conduct in a scale of the 
 values of the ends they are adapted to secure. 
 In this process of "deliberating" {scaling, or sub- 
 jecting them to the test of the libra) I must pay 
 
 [163] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 attention to them; but I cannot attend to them 
 all at the same time, or to any two of them in 
 strictly the same moment of time. In fact I 
 follow out the advantages of one; and then turn 
 my attention to another. Slowly, or perhaps 
 suddenly and in a highly emotional way, I drift, 
 or pass, or leap, to a decision. I will, in the nar- 
 rower meaning of the words; I issue a volition. 
 For, in spite of all denials to the contrary, in de- 
 liberate choice, something between action and 
 idea or emotion does intervene which we can 
 only express by the words, "I will." 
 
 These elements or stages in deliberate choice 
 which it is possible for psychological analysis 
 in the most favorable cases to detect, are cus- 
 tomarily more or less huddled together or quite 
 fused. The decision in which they end at any 
 one moment may be taken up and exchanged 
 for another before the entire process of delibera- 
 tion is complete. It may be too weak to with- 
 stand subsequent "temptations" to alter it. But 
 the immense significance of altering one's deci- 
 sion, as a proof of personal life, and as a test of 
 moral freedom, is thus increased rather than 
 wholly destroyed. And let these two truths 
 about every such phenomenon of deliberate 
 choice not be forgotten: Human nature as a self- 
 active, self-determining personality enters into 
 and shapes the process of choice at every stage 
 of its on-going; and this nature is not fixed once 
 for all by any causal influencesexternal to itseK 
 
 [ 164 J 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 Such change is indicative of a nature capable of 
 a personal development. 
 
 But is there nothing further to be known, of a 
 more definite character, as to those qualities that 
 with some sort of necessity determine the moral 
 development of the personal life? This question 
 bears some resemblance to the one already raised 
 as to the real nature of things, whether known 
 by science or experienced in practical ways. 
 All things must be, as we are wont to say "in 
 themselves," determined in certain forms which 
 philosophy has called "the categories." They 
 must have qualities, magnitude, stand in relation, 
 occupy time and space, etc., etc. What quali- 
 ties must the moral person possess and exercise, 
 in order to conform to the true type? The very 
 form in which we are obliged to ask this question 
 about the real nature of the person as moral 
 shows that its answer cannot fail to differ from 
 that given to the similar question about the real 
 nature and natural relations of things. For, 
 — and if there were no other reason, this would 
 be sufficient, — things have no choice as to their 
 own qualities and relations; but it is, in fact, an 
 essential quality of the person as moral, that he 
 should have a choice. 
 
 It is, however, in the doctrine of the virtues 
 that the truth about the question just raised 
 finds its answer. This doctrine as founded in the 
 facts of man's moral development notices, first 
 of all, the incontestable truth that, in all ages 
 
 [165] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 and everywhere, conduct has been esteemed 
 capable of division into two opposite kinds. 
 Some is esteemed "good" and some is esteemed 
 "bad." This distinction is not in the least 
 blurred by the fact that certain acts and courses 
 of conduct are often seen by all to be partly 
 good and partly bad, from the moral point of 
 view; and that much conduct which is esteemed 
 good by some judges is esteemed bad by other 
 judges. Nor is the distinction abolished but the 
 rather emphasized by the saying, now-a-days so 
 popular and so often misapplied, that "no man 
 is wholly good or wholly bad." 
 
 Valuable light is thrown upon the conception 
 of moral goodness, and so upon the doctrine of 
 the virtues, by the use in difFerent languages of 
 the words employed to express this fundamental 
 distinction. By the ancient Greeks the "good" 
 man was the one who had the manly character- 
 istics of bravery in battle for the state and 
 nobility of bearing. The word virtue (Virtus) 
 among the Latins emphasized the same character- 
 istics. The connection of the English and Ger- 
 man words for "good" with the German Gatte 
 indicates the emphasis which these languages 
 placed upon personal fitness in the virtuous life. 
 In Greek, again, virtue was that which, for a 
 man, is best. But the man is bad, or vicious, 
 who is deficient in these fundamental character- 
 istics. Where the influence of allied religious 
 conceptions becomes more obvious, the idea of 
 
 [166] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 stain and defilement becomes more emphatic. 
 The bad man has a darkened and soiled char- 
 acter. In Greek and in Sanscrit and in Latin 
 the idea of something black and dirty is incor- 
 porated in the term for moral badness. 
 
 But what are the qualities, the possession of 
 which entitles a man to be called good from the 
 moral point of view, and the lack of which, or 
 the opposite of which, bring upon him the un- 
 welcome and perhaps opprobrious title of bad- 
 ness, of unworthiness to be called a real and 
 virtuous man? The first appeal to history and 
 to the present witness of legal enactments, of 
 social customs, and even of professional treatises 
 on ethics, seems to land the answer to this ques- 
 tion in darkness, if not hopeless confusion. But 
 a closer examiaation of the testimony of the gen- 
 eral, if not the universal, workings of the moral 
 consciousness of the race, so far as this testimony 
 is accessible to us, shows that our search may 
 have a better result. 
 
 Even in the case of the categories, or universal 
 and necessary forms of the reality of things, 
 different thoroughly elaborated metaphysical sys- 
 tems furnished at their conclusion somewhat 
 different lists, and were prone to give widely 
 different accoimts of their origin and of the 
 method of their application. Any appeal to 
 the popular off-hand estimate inevitably results 
 in a great increase in the number of these cate- 
 gories, and in endless repetition and confusion. 
 
 [167] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The same thing is true of the ethical categories, 
 the virtues and vices which divide among them- 
 selves the field of the ethically good and the 
 ethically bad. But the doctrine of the virtues, 
 and therefore the description of man's personal- 
 ity as moral, and the laws and practical maxims 
 which should control his moral development, 
 require some attempt at the solution of this 
 problem. Fortunately, any attempt, if it is 
 not too pretentious, is sure to meet with a pretty 
 general agreement as to its truthfulness in fact, 
 whatever may be thought about the theoretical 
 explanations advanced for the facts, or for their 
 ultimate significance. In a word, the type of 
 the really moral person is not much more uncer- 
 tain than the type of the really existent thing. 
 
 Every piece of conduct, and more obviously 
 every deliberately chosen course of conduct, 
 involves in the inseparable unity of the personal 
 life all the so-called faculties of human nature. 
 But certain species of conduct seem to empha- 
 size some aspects or activities of this living unity, 
 to the relative exclusion of others. Some of 
 the virtues are appropriately ascribed to a moral 
 superiority, chiefly of the judgment; others, 
 to an excellent refinement or intensity of the 
 moral sentiments, the feeling for the morally 
 good; still others, to the more heroic and en- 
 during, and therefore morally more excellent 
 wUl of the individual whose virtues they are. 
 
 For purposes of convenience, therefore, and 
 
 [168] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 not without psychological warrant, though with 
 the hope of not being too much misunderstood, 
 we shall divide the virtues, or forms of conduct 
 which mankind agrees to call "good," into three 
 fundamental kinds or classes. These are Virtues 
 of the Will; Virtues of Judgment; Virtues of 
 Feeling. Under each of these heads, three fun- 
 damental virtues may be ranged: under virtues 
 of the will. Courage, Temperance (in the widest 
 meaning of the word), and Constancy; under 
 virtues of judgment. Wisdom, Justness, and 
 Trueness; under virtues of feeling, Kindness, 
 Sympathy (in the widest meaning of the word), 
 and Love as an ethical Affection. The good 
 person, then, is brave, controls in the interests 
 of reason his appetites and passions, and is de- 
 pendable or constant. He is also wise, or uses his 
 intellectual powers for ends that have value; he 
 is just to his fellows and to himself as one of the 
 same kind; and he is true in word and deed; he 
 has that respect for reality which is an essential 
 of his rational nature. But his social senti- 
 ments are of the more noble and ethically pref- 
 erable sort. If he must be just, and must speak 
 the truth, he strives also to be kind. He feels 
 with, as well as in pity for others; because they 
 are, as persons, of his own kin, — the virtue 
 appropriate to the doctrine of the brotherhood 
 of man. He has also the more active virtue of 
 the social life of personal beings; he has toward 
 all, in propriety as determined by their differ- 
 
 [169] 
 
 { 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 ing relations to him and to one another, the desire 
 to promote the real welfare, and somehow to 
 bless, his fellow men. He who has these vir- 
 tuous forms of the inner life controlling conduct, 
 
 — he is a "real good man." But the cowardly, 
 intemperate, fickle and untrustworthy, unwise, 
 unjust, deceiver and liar, who has no pity or 
 sympathy, or loving-kindness toward others, 
 
 — that fellow is a bad man. He is reaUy not 
 the kind of a person that he ought to be. And 
 when we consider that he has at least some dim 
 apprehension of what he ought to be; and at 
 least some measure of moral freedom to be- 
 come that better Self; then we disapprove of 
 him and say he merits ill for his bad character.^ 
 
 Manifold, indeed, are the ways in which the 
 different peoples and ages express in word or 
 deed their feeling of obligation to the different 
 virtues. The brave man in the Homeric poems 
 "puts might into his rage"; "breathes fierce 
 wrath through his nostril"; and "his blood boils." 
 But Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior" is the man 
 
 " Who, if he be called upon to face 
 Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 
 Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 
 
 keeps the law 
 
 In calnmess made. . . 
 
 More brave for this, that he hath much to love." 
 
 • For a detailed discussion of this doctrine of the Virtues, the 
 reader may consult Chapters X-XIII, of the author's "Philosophy 
 of Conduct." 
 
 [170] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 And Aristotle knew, as well as you or I, that 
 "the fool-hardy man is generally a coward at 
 bottom; he blusters so long as he can do so safely, 
 but turns tail when real danger comes." That 
 the virtue of humility is rational, because it is 
 wise and just, even the savage Ojis recognize in 
 the proverb: "If you can pull out, pull out your 
 own gray hairs." Or, as says the Dharma: 
 "That man truly pronounces the name of the 
 Loving Lord, who is in fortitude like the trunk 
 of a tree, and in humility like a blade of grass." 
 
 Substantially the same observations might be 
 made to summarize the different forms of con- 
 duct in which consists the excellence for the 
 life worthy of a person that characterizes the 
 equally difiBcult and seemingly variable virtues of 
 justness and trueness. The gap between the de- 
 mands of moral consciousness and actual prac- 
 tice is probably no greater with the "chiefs and 
 people" of the Tongan Islanders than it is with 
 the "Chiefs and people" of the United States 
 and Great Britain, if we select them as the 
 most apparently moral of the so-called Christian 
 nations. 
 
 From time immemorial those who have taken 
 the lead in reflection over the phenomena of 
 man's ethical life and development have made 
 the endeavor to bring about a closer unity in 
 the different virtues to which his moral nature 
 acknowledges the duty of obedience. As said 
 Socrates to Meno: "When I ask you for one 
 
 [171] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 virtue, you present me with a swarm of them." 
 And, indeed: Is there no one virtue, or form of 
 virtuous hving, which includes all the others? 
 If such a virtue could be discovered, how in- 
 comparably more easy would it be to be really 
 virtuous, and thoroughly so! In one place in 
 his most celebrated work on Ethics, the greatest 
 of all the psychologists of the ancient world 
 answers this question by the proposal to elevate 
 the virtue of "General Justice" to the throne 
 of undisputed authority. "Justice, as so de- 
 fined," says Aristotle, "is complete virtue." It 
 is "not a part of virtue but the whole of virtue." 
 On this account, it is often spoken of as the chief 
 of virtues, and such that "neither evening nor 
 morning star is so lovely." But at once the 
 process of "hedging" begins; and on trying to 
 follow this trail, we are at its end quite disap- 
 pointed in our expectations. "For general justice 
 is not complete in an absolute sense, but only 
 in relation to one's neighbor." How, then, about 
 the virtuous treatment of one's enemy or one's 
 slave? In the estimate of this ancient writer, 
 a slave was not a person in the fullest sense of 
 the word; still less was a slave to be put in the 
 same class as one's neighbor. And should the 
 good man not be brave and constant and wise 
 and sympathetic in the exercise of this virtue of 
 general justice? The answer to the question 
 inevitably leads us around again to the point 
 where we must recognize the obligation for the 
 [172 J 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 moral completeness of the personal life, due to 
 all those qualities of self-activity with reference 
 to ends of value, that constitute the very nature 
 of a -person. \ 
 
 Not more satisfactory from either the psy- 
 chological or the practical point of view is the 
 effort of a school of modern theologians and of 
 the German philosopher Lotze to unify all the 
 virtues by reducing them to the principle of Love 
 or Benevolence. An American theologian pro- 
 posed to universalize the virtues in this way, 
 " The Law of Love and Love as a Law." Mosaism 
 defined "what is good" as "to do justly, and to 
 love mercy, and to walk humbly." Jesus sum- 
 marized aU right conduct for the finite person in 
 the endeavor to keep the exhortation to mould 
 himself after the pattern of the Divine Person: 
 "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father 
 which is in Heaven is perfect." Lotze, after 
 having defined "benevolence" as the "effort for 
 the production of another's felicity," declares 
 that the idea of benevolence must give us the sole 
 supreme principle of moral conduct. Literally 
 interpreted, we find all these and similar state- 
 ments, either not intended as scientific generali- 
 zations, or else not in accordance with the facts 
 of moral consciousness or social development, 
 and too vague to be useful for the conduct of 
 either the individual or of society. 
 
 In brief, the virtues, whether we make the Hst 
 longer or shorter than that which we have pro- 
 
 C173] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 posed to include the more fundamental of them, 
 cannot be reduced to any one virtue. They can- 
 not be unified in any such way. They must be 
 unified, if at all, by showing how their exercise 
 and harmonious development progressively tends 
 toward the perfection of the individual person 
 as moral, and toward the perfection of human 
 society regarded as consisting in the conduct of 
 relations between persons. To accept this truth, 
 and appreciate its more profound meaning, is 
 to make some advance, at the least, toward the 
 discovery of the secret of personality. 
 
 The motive in large part for the persistent 
 effort to unify the virtues by reducing them to 
 one virtue has been to do away with, cr to soften, 
 the conflict of the virtues. For if the person is 
 a self-activity, with freedom of choice, but only 
 obligated to the binding formula of one dictate, or 
 intuition, of what he ought to do; then the problem 
 of settling in a practical way the conflict of the 
 claims of two or more specific forms of virtuous 
 conduct is solved at once. And, indeed, not a 
 few moralists have denied the possibility of a 
 conflict of the virtues. Such a denial, however, 
 makes a hollow mockery of some of the most 
 vitally real and truly tragic experiences of human 
 life. And — "Note well" — such experiences are 
 most frequent and severe with the best of men. 
 It is not those with sleepy or dead consciences 
 who are most often subject to this awe-inspiring 
 condition of mind, heart, and will. It is not 
 
 [174] 
 
THE PERSON AS MORAL 
 
 they who have to search with moot, passionate 
 eagerness the resolution of the intensely strained 
 moral personality: "I want, Oh! how devotedly, 
 to do my duty; but how sadly ignorant I am as 
 to what I ought to do. In such conflicts, cour- 
 age is often pitted against wisdom; constancy 
 against justness; trueness against kindness, tem- 
 perance against sympathy; and it is hard to 
 decide which of these virtues — all entitled to 
 rank as motives to virtuous conduct — shall be 
 yielded in fact the right to move the will. But 
 the choice between the virtues, so to say, is the high- 
 est form of rational choice. It is the supreme 
 and supremely valuable exercise of moral free- 
 dom. Of him who draws back "in Hector's 
 fashion" it may be said: 
 
 " Whoso is seen to skulk and shirk the fight 
 Shall nowise save his carcass from the dogs." 
 
 But of those who stand up like men in this fight 
 it is written: 
 
 "Languor is not in your heart. 
 Weakness is not in your word. 
 Weariness not on your brow." 
 
 The underlying problem of the metaphysics 
 of ethics concerns the source and final justifica- 
 tion of the authority which the moral conscious- 
 ness exercises over the nature and development 
 of the personal life. We cannot enter into this 
 metaphysical problem in a way to divert from 
 our pursuit in a straighter line of the inquiries: 
 What is it to be a Person.? and. What may we 
 
 [ 175] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 at the best make probable in the form of a rea- 
 soned opinion as to the secret of Personality? 
 What we have already found that seems true as 
 we have followed this straighter line does not 
 favor the theory that the values sought and 
 demanded by the moral consciousness of the 
 person lie outside of the person as moral. The 
 seeming is, the rather, that no abstraction of a 
 so-called moral law, and no theories which re- 
 gard moral conduct as simply useful for reaching 
 values that lie outside of the moral personality 
 as such, afford the solution of these problems. 
 To us it seems true that the source of the author- 
 ity of moral consciousness lies in the response 
 of the actual Self to its own Ideal of self-hood; 
 and that the value of moral conduct must be 
 estimated by the value of this Ideal. Thus far, 
 then, every normal person is capable and respon- 
 sible for his own attempt at the practical solution 
 of his own particular problem. 
 
 But where in reality shall we find the groimds 
 for the formation, by processes of thought and 
 imagination, of the framework of this Ideal? In 
 this Reality, if at all, must we discover the secret 
 of PersonaUty. 
 
 [176] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 'HE value of the emotional apprecia- 
 tion of the beautiful, and of the 
 
 activities and achievements to which 
 
 it gives rise, for the life of the individual and 
 for the development of civilization, is beyond all 
 dispute. If we attempt to conceive of what the 
 world of nature and of men would be without 
 objects that irresistibly call forth the admiration 
 and love now universally attached to this kind 
 of value, we find our imagination baJ0Bed at the 
 very beginning of the attempt. Man's food and 
 drink and clothing, and his housing, would be 
 almost completely changed. Similar changes 
 would be made in the implements of his fishing, 
 hunting, and agricultm-e; and even in the weap- 
 ons with which he makes war. Not an act or 
 a habit of his daily business and social inter- 
 course that would not be altered, — one finds it 
 difiicult to conjecture how. Sky and earth, 
 grasses and trees and flowers, would lose much 
 of their significance; and indeed, innumerable 
 forms of all these growths would never have 
 come into existence. It was the prophetic call 
 of the superior excellence of their beauty that 
 
 [177] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 urged the mind and hand of man to compel 
 nature to improve her natural ways of employ- 
 ing her creative energy. As to the arts, and the 
 works under each one of them that were achieved 
 by those whom the world acclaims as its "mas- 
 ters," no dawning of a conception of them could 
 have lighted the darkness of human existence. 
 Of architecture as distinguished frona mere build- 
 ing; of landscape-gardening as distinguished 
 from areas of mud or sand grubbed with a 
 shapeless hoe; of sculpture and painting as dis- 
 tinguished from the crude scratchings on wood 
 or stone that might serve the purpose of useful- 
 ness in securing the lower necessaries or avoid- 
 ing the dangers of savage life; and of music as 
 distinguished from animal-like bowlings and 
 screamings; — of all forms of art, there would 
 be none to bless and lighten the external sur- 
 roundings which contribute to the moulding of 
 the personal life. 
 
 But it is not of the externals of the personal 
 life that we design chiefly to speak at the present 
 time. It is not the utility of art by way of 
 making the atmosphere more comfortable or 
 promotive of human well-being in the form of 
 its enjoyment of varied pleasures, that we now 
 chiefly desire to commemorate and praise. We 
 are, the rather, bent on showing that the love 
 of beauty, and the aspiration and achievement 
 which spring from this emotion, are essentials 
 of personality. Without these inner qualifica- 
 
 [178] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 tions man would not be, and could never become, 
 the person that he really is. And besides, this 
 movement of the self-activity of man in a con- 
 scious, purposeful, and free way, is so closely 
 connected with the nature and development of 
 the moral and religious life, that the sesthetical, 
 the ethical, and the worshipful attitudes toward 
 reality, although not to be identified, cannot be 
 wholly separated. 
 
 What we call the "decencies" of social inter- 
 course are as well named the "petty" but by no 
 means insignificant moralities of personal life. 
 He violates in some measure the obligation to 
 act rationally who makes no intelligent and 
 voluntary effort to acquire and observe them. 
 There is no writer on morals less likely to be 
 accused of finicalism than the Stoic philosopher, 
 the lame slave Epictetus. In one of his Dis- 
 courses, however, he complains that some per- 
 sons assume the role of philosophy, while "failing 
 to fulfil what the character of a man implies." 
 "In what," says he, "do we act like cattle?" 
 
 "When we act gluttonously, lewdly, rashly, 
 sordidly, inconsiderately, into what are we sunk? 
 Into cattle. What have we destroyed? The 
 rational being." Again, when discoursing of 
 Purity, both of body and soul, as though the 
 two had some principle of union, this practical 
 philosopher, so indifferent to mere conventionali- 
 ties and so scornful of pettiness, indulges in speech 
 where wisdom is blended with sarcasm and humor. 
 
 [179] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 "I declare, for my own part, I would rather that 
 a young man, on his first inclination to philoso- 
 phy, should come to me finically dressed, than 
 with his hair soUed and dirty. For there appears 
 ia him some idea of beauty and desire of decency; 
 and where he imagines it to be, there he applies 
 his endeavors. One has nothing more to do 
 than to point it out to him and say, 'You seek 
 beauty, young man, and you do weU. Be as- 
 sured, then, that it springs from the rational 
 part of you. Seek it there, where the pursuits 
 and avoid^-nces, the desires and aversions, are 
 concerned. Herein consists your excellence. . . . 
 But if he should come to me soiled and dirty, 
 with moustaches drooping to his knees, what can 
 I say to him; by what similitude aUure him! 
 For what has he studied that has any resem- 
 blance to beauty, so that I may transfer his atten- 
 tion, and say that beauty is not there, but here? 
 Would you have me tell him that beauty consists 
 not ia filth, but in reason? For has he any de- 
 sire of beauty? Has he any appearance of it? 
 Go, and argue with a hog not to roll in the mire." 
 How much more obviously applicable is all this 
 to those, who in the name of beauty and claiming 
 the authority of the love of beauty, and its free- 
 dom of spirit, make use of art to pander to the 
 "cattle-like," rather than the rational nature of 
 their fellow men. 
 
 In vindicating the love of beauty as an essen- 
 tial element in the rationality of the person, we 
 
 [180] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 begin where we have begun in our treatment of 
 the other corresponding elements; we begin with 
 sesthetical consciousness. This has its emo- 
 tions and sentiments, its thoughts and imagin- 
 ings, its impulses and deeds of will, peculiar to 
 itself. But they all arise in the unity of the same 
 rational Self. Man's Self is "just naturally" 
 a lover of the beautiful. 
 
 On analyzing the sesthetical consciousness, the 
 first thing to be noticed is its marked pleas- 
 ure-pain quality. Some things in nature and 
 of human production, quite apart from their 
 usefulness or their more immediate relation to 
 ourselves, produce in the soul a peculiar feeling 
 of pleased admiration; some produce a disagree- 
 able feeling of mild or severe repulsion. But 
 these emotions are seldom a perfect blend of 
 wholly agreeable or wholly disagreeable feelings. 
 
 This pleasure is not, however, quite like that 
 which one gets from eating the oranges of Egypt 
 or Syria; nor is the pain of the same quality as 
 that which follows biting into a bitter persimmon. 
 The complex sentiments with which men respond 
 to sesthetical impressions have two classes of 
 characters that distinguish them from all emo- 
 tional disturbances of a merely sensuously agree- 
 able or sensuously disagreeable form. They have 
 a certain universality and a certain rationality. 
 These differences suggest that while sensuous 
 tastes, appetencies, and preferences of an emo- 
 tional character, relate to what " in-f act-is ; " 
 
 [181] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 genuinely sesthetical tastes, appetencies, and 
 preferences, belong, the rather, in some sort to 
 the sphere of "that-which-ought-to-be." True 
 the silly motto, De gustibus non disputandum, 
 may be applied to the preference of a rag-time 
 jig for a sonata of Beethoven, or of the vulgar 
 song of a dance-hall to Schubert's Erl-King. 
 But it is impossible to convince the cultivated 
 sesthetical consciousness that such a preference 
 is rational. That we have little or no ground, 
 except that of their physiological effects — and 
 these lie quite outside of the sphere of the beau- 
 tiful — for an argument over the fact that some 
 men like olives or caviar, and some do not, is 
 almost equally evident. For these are the tastes 
 about the reasonableness of which it is not seemly 
 to dispute; unless, indeed, the dispute can be 
 raised into the realm of the really sesthetical or 
 the moral. But he who has no respect for the 
 beauty of a symmetrical or a noble and heroic per- 
 sonality seems monstrously lacking in a rational 
 love of what is worthy of respect, in the highest 
 form of its impressiveness. 
 
 A second distinguishing characteristic of the 
 sesthetical sentiments is their objectivity. Of 
 course, every feeling of the beautiful is some- 
 body's feeling; it is an emotional disturbance 
 occurring in the conscious life of some subject. 
 But the qualities which call forth the feeling are 
 invariably regarded as somehow inhering in the 
 object. The fading colors of a gloriously beau- 
 
 [182] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 tiful sunset remain in reality scarcely long enough 
 for me to admire them. And yet I am sure that 
 it is the sunset and something belonging to the 
 beauty of the quality and arrangement of these 
 colors, and not my admiration of them, which 
 deserves to be called the object of my subjective 
 state. The object and the subjective state are, 
 in this case, equally fleeting; in a few moments 
 both have forever flown from the world of the 
 really existent. But the essential character of 
 the relation between subject and object is as 
 evident as it is when I learn how throughout 
 countless centuries millions of living rational 
 beings have looked upon the snows of the Hima- 
 layas with hearts subdued in reverence or almost 
 bursting with admiration and wonder at the 
 awful beauty of their grandeur. It is, we repeat, 
 the Object which is beautiful, whether its beauty 
 be that of nature or that imparted by the mould- 
 ing process of some form of art. The beauty is 
 over there; the love of beauty is in me. This love 
 is an essential part of the constitution of personal- 
 ity; it is also an essential factor in the develop- 
 ment of personal life. 
 
 Judgments as to what is beautiful differ with 
 different ages and with different individuals in 
 every age, even more than do the judgments as 
 to what is morally good. The reasons for this 
 are obvious enough. The fact is a matter of 
 daily experience. Ask the average man, who is 
 not an adept in the art of self-reflection. Why 
 
 [183] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 he considers courage, fidelity, justice, kindness, 
 to be right, and the opposite forms of conduct 
 and of character to be wrong; and he will prob- 
 ably make shift to give you some kind of an 
 answer. But ask the same man, Why he con- 
 siders the sunset or the mountain, or some par- 
 ticular work of art — some painting, poem, or 
 piece of music — to be beautiful; and he will 
 either be unable to answer, or he will be forced 
 to confess that it is because some one has told 
 him it is so. This is the answer of ignorance or 
 prevarication. For no one can effectually com- 
 mand or advise another to the genuine love of 
 any particular beautiful object. Social influ- 
 ences, some breadth of personal experience as 
 to the results of conduct, and reflection over the 
 varying phases of his own moral consciousness, 
 have laid a somewhat firm foundation for every 
 man's opinions on moral issues, the values of 
 the motives that influence them, and the deeds 
 that embody them. But not the same culture 
 has been given to his judgments on matters of 
 art. The dread of the effects that follow many 
 of the grandest displays of the tragic beauty of 
 nature has made it impossible to look at these 
 displays from the more purely sesthetical points 
 of view. There are few that can appreciate the 
 awful beauty of the sea and the sky, when the 
 ship is sinking. It need occasion no surprise, 
 then, to find that feeling leads judgment in mat- 
 ters of art much oftener than in matters of 
 [184] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 conduct; and that judgment awakens and leads 
 feeling so much oftener in matters of conduct 
 than in matters of art. 
 
 For similar reasons the canons of art have 
 never been developed, and are not likely ever to 
 be developed, to the same extent of definiteness 
 and universal acceptance, as the canons of moral- 
 ity. "I have heard many say," remarked my 
 musical friend, who was a member of the coun- 
 try's most celebrated quartet; "I have even 
 heard some musicians say, that they do not like 
 the latest compositions of Beethoven; but when 
 I hear them say that, I feel greatly superior." 
 And superior he certainly was; but how shall 
 one prove a judgment like that? Doubtless, in 
 the final analysis it must be chiefly committed 
 to the musical feeling of the majority of those 
 who have the most refined musical feeling. But 
 here, again, the selection of those possessed of 
 such refinements would be largely left to the 
 judgments which are themselves inspired and 
 shaped by experiences of the same kind of feel- 
 ing. In some large degree, what is so conspic- 
 uously true of the art of music is true of all the 
 other arts. 
 
 But, as in every other of the several greater 
 domains of the personal life, so in the "respect for 
 reality" to which man's sesthetical conscious- 
 ness renders obedience, the character of the 
 intellect and the influence of education, play an 
 important, even an essential part. The arts 
 
 [185] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 have their canons, — in some worthy sense "es- 
 tabhshed," if not incontrovertibly so, or by an 
 absolutely universal agreement. For there are 
 probably more so-called artists in every form of 
 art, who are persons of perverted feeling, weak 
 judgment, vacillating wills, and unworthy mo- 
 tives, than there are among the professional 
 teachers of the truths of science, or of the 
 laws and maxims that should govern righteous 
 Uving. 
 
 Some of the more fundamental qualities which 
 should be possessed by every object that has a 
 natural right to awaken the love and admiration 
 of beauty may be suggested, if not in a way de- 
 monstrated, by the classification of the arts which 
 has been adopted by general, if not really forced, 
 consent. 
 
 No other of the qualities which seem to en- 
 title any art object to be called beautiful is more 
 generally agreed upon than that group which is 
 somewhat vaguely expressed by the term "life- 
 likeness." The pictorial or poetical presentation 
 of things that are themselves alive must partake, 
 as a presentation, of the life of the real objects, 
 in order to arouse legitimately the love of the 
 beautiful. It is the life caught from nature which 
 imparts its beauty to the landscape painting, 
 the picture of sea, or sky, or tree, or flower. It 
 is the same quality which tests the beauty of 
 the figure moulded of the less plastic material 
 which sculpture employs. Even the beautiful 
 
 [186] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 structure of the art of architecture must stand 
 firm on its footing, or soar aloft as though moved 
 by the spirit of aspiration; its lines must sug- 
 gest strength or graceful movement. But above 
 all must music express, and arouse by expressing, 
 all the more vital forms of human emotion. To 
 this, with the rhythmic movement, the rise and 
 fall, the quickening and slowing of pulse, which 
 characterizes the life of all that has life, poetry 
 adds the description in language, man's supreme 
 form of rational expression, the spiritual content 
 of his life as a person. 
 
 But this admirable and moving quality of 
 life-likeness is not to be attained by mere imita- 
 tion. Even the camera with the highest mag- 
 nifying power of the most perfect lens cannot 
 produce a beautiful picture, unless artistic feel- 
 ing selects the object, the point of view, and the 
 right moment for releasing the shutter. No 
 kind of artistic work consists in copying nature 
 or the external frame of human beings, whether 
 posed as individuals. or grouped according to any 
 of the innumerable social relations. It is the 
 s'pirit in the object which the s-pirit in the artist 
 must apprehend by imagination, appreciate at 
 its true value, and reveal in forms that are con- 
 ditioned upon the skillfid use of such plasticity 
 of material as his particular kind of art permits. 
 
 All the more important phases of external na- 
 ture, which are suggestive of an indwelling spirit 
 that resembles the human spirit, — only grander, 
 
 [187] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 more subtle, mysterious, and alluring, — can 
 be represented to some extent in all of the arts. 
 But it is music and poetry which have in this 
 respect the superiority over all the other arts. 
 For these arts are of all the freest from the limita- 
 tions which the stubbornness of the material im- 
 poses on all human work. Only to a limited 
 extent can we have our way with natural ob- 
 jects; they have a will which is not our will, which 
 is, indeed, often opposed to our will. They have 
 ways of their own; and only within narrow 
 ranges do their ways correspond actually with 
 our preferred ways. But the WUl that is in them, 
 and the ways of their behavior, excite in us ad- 
 miration, affection, and respect, of the distinctly 
 aesthetical sort. Some of them we find sublime; 
 some graceful. The beauty of the orderly and 
 harmonious seems to prevail at one time and 
 place; at another time and place, the beauty of 
 the luxurious and the wild. The magnifying 
 glass applied to the meanest insect or the most 
 loathsome worm reveals a beauty of form and 
 color in details, the exquisiteness of which the 
 art of cloisonne or jewelry can do no better than 
 to reproduce. 
 
 All these spiritual qualities the human mind, 
 out of the depths of its rational love of beauty, 
 obstinately refuses to credit to itself as though 
 they were of merely subjective origin and sig- 
 nificance; — obstinately persists in assigning to 
 the object as an existing form of reality. The 
 
 [188] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 attribution of beauty to the external world is 
 every whit as rational and as well-founded as 
 are the attributions of law and causality, and 
 the actual relations in space and time, as made 
 by the physical sciences. Indeed, the very con- 
 ceptions of law, and order, and the infinity of 
 space and time, have half their value when they 
 are considered from the point of view of the 
 sesthetical consciousness. What, then, stands 
 in the way of announcing the truth: In every 
 beautiful object, Nature as a Reality of spiritual 
 character and spiritual worth, reveals itself to 
 man's spirit, and lays a sort of mandate for 
 admiration and affection upon the human will. 
 Or, in other words: Any object, in order to be 
 considered beautiful, must appear to the human 
 mind as revealing some traits kindred with itself, 
 of an ideally worthy spiritual life. 
 
 The transcendent objectivity and value for the 
 development of the personal life, of the admiring 
 and worshipful love of beauty is, however, made 
 apparent only when we consider the intimate 
 relations of art and religion as they unite to 
 define for the human imagination the spiritual 
 character of the Universe in the midst of which 
 man's personal life is set, and on which his per- 
 sonal development is conditioned. Of what kind 
 of Spirit shall we conceive of this Universe as 
 the revealer? When forced to take the "scien- 
 tific" point of view, or the point of view of so- 
 called "common sense," the primitive man knows 
 
 [189] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 as truly as does the modem agnostic, what the 
 fetish, the totem, the tree or the stone he wor- 
 ships, actually is, — that is, as a Thing and not 
 as a Spirit. He will tell you, he does not wor- 
 ship the thing but the spirit in the thing. If 
 imagination depicts this natural object as benev- 
 olent or malevolent, the crude work of the 
 savage will delineate it by exaggerating the feat- 
 ures that express the spirit in the life of nature 
 or of man. It is as true of the savage, as Plotinus 
 declared it to be of Phidias : " He did not create his 
 Zeus after any perceived pattern, but made him 
 such as he would be, if Zeus deigned to appear 
 to mortal eyes." It was in accordance with this 
 half-moral respect for the character, so to say, 
 of a World that can excite and rationally support 
 the love of the beautiful, that ApoUonius con- 
 tended for the superiority of the Greek to the 
 Egyptian representations of the gods; since the 
 former gave to them their ideals of the human 
 spirit, while the latter made use of grotesque 
 and exaggerated imitations of bestial life. 
 
 The undeveloped thought and unrefined imag- 
 ination of the savage or so-called primitive man 
 can conceive of a world of many objects in a dis- 
 continuous, fragmentary, and disintegrated, or 
 as yet not fully "integrated" way. To the dis- 
 tracted and unorganized personal life of the 
 human individual at this stage of development, 
 his religious emotions and imagination respond 
 by creating a horde of divinities, of invisible 
 
 [190] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 spiritual agencies, that are incapable of forming 
 any spiritual unity among themselves; and still 
 less so, of imparting any spiritual unity to the 
 world over which they have limited, and often 
 mutually hostile, spheres of temporary control. 
 The Ideal of Divine Being in the form which 
 Pantheism gives to it, or the belief that the Uni- 
 verse is God, cannot belong to the religion of 
 savages; if for no other reason, because savages 
 have not sufficient culture of the creative imag- 
 ination. In India, where alone in ancient times 
 a philosophical Monism is found, the preceding 
 and the still co-existing religion among the mul- 
 titudes is panpsychism rather than pantheism. 
 But even in the Vedic hymns, the more "enthu- 
 siastic phrasifiers" show a more or less strong 
 tendency to religious syncretism. In the later 
 part of the Rig Veda there appears a nearer ap- 
 proach to a real pantheism. The "great, one 
 spirituality of all the gods" was beginning to 
 be realized. But it is not the mere conception 
 of a vast collection of things thrown together in 
 some matter-of-fact way, that is calculated to 
 satisfy either the sesthetical or the religious de- 
 mands of the personal life. Such a conception is 
 neither stable nor adequate to serve for man's 
 artistic or religious development. Nature must 
 be conceived of as a spiritual Unity in order to 
 satisfy the scientific, the aesthetical, and the 
 religious consciousness, — that is, all the de- 
 mands of the rational nature of man. It was the 
 
 [191] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 conception of Brahma = All-Energy that com- 
 pleted the beginnings of philosophic pantheism. 
 
 It is Theism, however, — as we shall see more 
 clearly when we come to consider the fuller con- 
 tent of the religious consciousness, — which fills 
 out and satisfies most completely all the de- 
 mands of both the sesthetical and the religious 
 consciousness in its endeavors to conceive of 
 the world as a spiritual Unity. Longinus had 
 already caught this truth in its application to 
 one form of the sesthetical respect for reality, 
 when he says: "When a writer uses any other 
 resource, he shows himself to be a man; but the 
 Sublime lifts him near to the great spirit of the 
 Deity." In another aspect, as Bosanquet truly 
 says of Plotinus: "In the directness with which 
 it is perceived, beauty has an analogy to mys- 
 tical intuition which often makes it find favor 
 with those who think methodic science too cir- 
 cuitous for an available avenue to truth." 
 
 We have seen that the application of our 
 sesthetical consciousness to natural objects in- 
 evitably implies a sort of personifying process 
 similar, in a way, to that employed by all our 
 claims to have given to our minds in terms of 
 science a knowledge of reality, to which Reality 
 corresponds because our knowledge faithfully re- 
 sponds to it. On the larger scale of the Universe 
 considered as a whole the same thing is true. 
 Every judgment of taste, in the higher and non- 
 sensuous meaning of the word, bears a silent 
 
 [192] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 witness to the kinship of the human spirit with 
 a boundless Spiritual Life, whose Reality is felt 
 with a sympathetic joy but is not capable of 
 mathematical demonstration or of scientific dis- 
 covery and testing. In one of his "Philosophical 
 Letters" Schiller affirms: "The Divinity is already 
 very near to that man who has succeeded in 
 collecting all beauty, all greatness, all excellence, 
 in both the small and great of Nature, and in 
 evolving from this manifoldness the great Unity." 
 This is true only because the meaning of such 
 a conception of Nature makes it the equivalent 
 of the Ideal of a transcendently perfect Personal 
 Life. 
 
 There is one phase of the nature and develop- 
 ment of the Person as a lover of beauty which 
 requires a very special mention in this connection. 
 This concerns the theory which explains why 
 Tragedy is the highest form of art. The theory 
 is so important to the approach to any inquiry 
 into the secret of personality that a somewhat 
 extended quotation from a work of the author in 
 which the whole subject is treated at a greater 
 length seems permissible. 
 
 "The tragic idea, and its appeal to the appro- 
 priate sentiments, whether set forth in sculpture, 
 painting, music, poetry, or prose dramatic litera- 
 ture, is foimd in almost all the greater and more 
 highly appreciated products of art. The ver- 
 dict of the world's best artistic judgment runs 
 this way. Struggle against difficulties, scorning 
 
 [193] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 of pain, self-sacrificing affection, the often baffled 
 but final triumph of justice, human penitence 
 and pity, and Divine pity and grace, find their 
 expression through the tragic in art. But these 
 are all ideas and sentiments that fall under the 
 most heroic spiritual activities and which corre- 
 spond to the supreme and profoundly satisfying 
 ideals of spiritual Life." 
 
 "The persistent and rational determination of 
 mankind not to regard its aesthetical sentiments 
 and judgments as purely subjective, but to 
 ground them in Reality, cannot be disregarded. 
 This determination is both cause and result of 
 the belief that all the forms and kinds of beauty 
 have their ground and ultimate explanation in 
 a Universal Personal Life. The world when re- 
 garded from the sesthetical, as from every other 
 point of view, is seen to be undergoing a process 
 of development. It is, at least in many respects, 
 and so far as its processes are open to human re- 
 search, coming to be more and more beautiful; 
 and therefore more satisfactory to man's sesthet- 
 ical ideals. This evolution itself is, of all con- 
 ceivable natural things and processes, the most 
 awfully and mysteriously sublime. It is a de- 
 velopment characterized by order and harmony 
 and grace, and by exquisite workmanship in 
 details; but it is also characterized by rigor, 
 severity, and luxuriant wildness in parts. It has 
 the marks of a spiritual process, of a vast march 
 onward that is compelled, and shaped or more 
 
 [194] 
 
THE PERSON AS A LOVER OF BEAUTY 
 
 gently urged, by the Power of an indwelling 
 Spiritual Life." 
 
 These elements of struggle and pain, of loss 
 and self-sacrifice, of dark mystery and almost 
 hopeless agony, are forced upon the personal 
 life of man as indispensable elements in his per- 
 sonal development, and even in his personal 
 existence. Their inexpressible value is impressed 
 and enforced by everything that we know about 
 man's personality as self-active under the con- 
 trol of moral and sesthetical ideals. But they 
 have their objective realities. That Spiritual 
 Unity, which science personifies as Nature, and 
 religion personifies as God, must be conceived 
 as somehow unifying and harmonizing them all 
 in his own Divine Being, if only we can Know 
 Him as He really is. 
 
 It is, however, in man's religious nature that 
 all the qualities and activities of the personal 
 life find their most perfect expression and their 
 supreme development. What man most essen- 
 tially is as a Person can be understood only by 
 understanding him as a religious being. In the 
 depths of this nature, if anywhere, we may hope to 
 discover some answer to the Secret of Personality, 
 especially on the side of his Titanic struggle to 
 overcome physical evil, unreason, ugliness, and 
 moral weakness, error, sin, and shame. 
 
 [195] 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 TEE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 FROM fifty to twenty-five years ago an 
 essentially materialistic metaphysics was 
 much more dominant in the spheres of 
 the physical and chemical sciences than it is at 
 the present time. Its method was, under the 
 general but abstract conceptions of Law and 
 Evolution, to arrange the classified facts, fill in 
 their gaps and so-called "missing links" with 
 venturesome conjectures, and announce the re- 
 sults, when thus "systematized," as affording a 
 satisfactory, if not altogether demonstrable and 
 a 'priori explanation of the Universe of natural 
 objects and of human history. For this theory 
 did not stop or hesitate at any barrier that pro- 
 posed a radical or even a very important distinc- 
 tion between the forces which seem to reveal the 
 nature and control the evolution of things, and 
 the nature and development of the self-deter- 
 mining, morally free, and rational being of man, 
 — the individual person, or his social institutions 
 and relations. Its metaphysics not only assumed 
 to explain in a mechanical way its own founda- 
 tions in human reason; but it also undertook 
 to dominate the hitherto accepted principles 
 and canons of morality, art, and religion. 
 [196] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 It is not strange, then, that the extreme ad- 
 vocates of this all-embracing metaphysical mate- 
 rialism rejoiced in the discovery of individuals 
 and races, which bore all the other character- 
 istic features of being human, but were almost or 
 quite deficient on the one side or element of per- 
 sonality to which we give the name religion. 
 They eagerly, but almost uniformly without 
 any attempt at criticism, ransacked books of 
 travel to find evidences of savage or "primitive" 
 men who had no traces of a belief in a god or in 
 the existence of the soul after death. It did not 
 matter to their minds that these announcements 
 of such a fortunate finding were quite customarily 
 made by travellers who had little knowledge of 
 the language of the tribes they were reporting; 
 who did not sufficiently appreciate that the 
 secrets of religious belief and cult are among the 
 things first of all to be guarded with great care 
 and last of all to be given away to strangers; 
 who were oftenest themselves extremely unfitted 
 to approach the subject with the requisite in- 
 telligence and sympathy derived from compara- 
 tive studies; and who were by no means always 
 free from the justifiable impression of being ante- 
 cedently pretty sure to find just what they set 
 out to find, and not much other or more. 
 
 But there was another class of reporters con- 
 cerning the non-religious nature of savage and 
 primitive man whose influence was even more 
 misleading. This class consisted for the most 
 
 [197] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 part of missionaries and orthodox Catholic and 
 Protestant theologians. Such explorers or resi- 
 dents, or readers of books by explorers or resi- 
 dents, did not allow the important distinction 
 between religion and religions, or between re- 
 ligion that is just simply religion and true reli- 
 gion. And, since "true religion" is with such, 
 or ought to be, my religion, it follows as a matter 
 of course that there are many individuals and 
 not a few tribes, — not all of them savage or 
 primitive, — that are irreligious persons. But 
 to be irreligious in another's estimate is by no 
 means to be wholly non-religious, — that is, 
 wholly lacking in the fundamental and germinal 
 forms of a religious nature, and quite devoid 
 of the capacity for a fine and noble rehgious 
 development. 
 
 The days of this ignorance are now winked at. 
 Indeed, among students of comparative religion 
 they have almost become matter of merely 
 historical interest rather than theoretical con- 
 cernment. We do not think that any other 
 aspect, side, rational activity, — however one 
 pleases to designate from selected points of view, 
 the nature and development of personality, — is 
 any more surely fundamental and universal than 
 is that which we call religious. Man as a per- 
 son is, in fact, religious. Being in fact religious 
 is essential to his complete personality. All 
 men, irrespective of divergencies of race, period, 
 of ignorance or culture, of forms of expression in 
 
 [198] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 creeds or ceremonies or secret cults, — men in 
 general, whether or not, we can say this of each 
 and every individual man, — are "just natu- 
 rally" religious. To have one's nature totally 
 devoid of religious impulses, emotions, aspirations, 
 ideas and ideals, is to be so far forth abnormal. 
 It is to be sadly handicapped in the effort at 
 personal development and personal influence of 
 the highest sort among one's fellow men. 
 
 The questions as to the nature and the uni- 
 versality of religion are essentially inter-related. 
 When we seek for a thing, we must know for 
 what sort of thing we are seeking. If we do not 
 find that particular thing, we may possibly find 
 something not quite like it, which, however, is 
 the better worth the finding. But when we claim 
 to have found everywhere essentially the same 
 thing, we must be able to describe the thing so 
 as essentially to agree with what in fact we have 
 been seeking and finding. Fortunately we are 
 not at present beginning any such search. Other- 
 wise there would be little hope of finishing the 
 task in which the search is comprehended. 
 
 The nature of religion may be defined from 
 either of two quite distant points of view. It 
 may be defined from the point of view attained 
 by human reason when it has reached its highest 
 stages of self-understanding and self-apprecia- 
 tion; and when the contents and achievements 
 of the religious consciousness have been sym- 
 pathetically appreciated and criticised as they 
 
 [199] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 appear in the clearer lights of the "all-around" 
 development of the personal life. But religion 
 may also be defined as it manifests itself among 
 the children of nature; in its "darksome begin- 
 nings" and by tracing its "tedious upward- 
 climbings." Is it not in this way, however, 
 that we must come to an understanding of the 
 nature and development of every side of the 
 rational, personal life of man? We shall briefly 
 regard the subject from both these points of view. 
 And we begin with the latter. 
 
 The word "religion" as signifying some sort 
 of a "binding" between the human and the 
 Divine has been referred to as giving the essence 
 of the earliest and most persistent of its forms. 
 In accordance with this idea, Lactantius defined 
 religion as "the bond which imits man to God." 
 But philologists do not agree as to the meaning 
 of the term. Among the Hindus, Hebrews, 
 Greeks, Celts, or Germans, there is no corre- 
 sponding word; and these include some of the 
 most obviously religious of all the world's peoples. 
 In spite of all divergencies, however, we find 
 certain conceptions prevalent in all the lowest 
 forms of religion; and some of these forms are 
 prevalent everywhere. These elements of uni- 
 versal religion may be grouped as follows: (1) 
 The belief in invisible, superhuman power; (2) 
 this power conceived of after the analogy of the 
 human spirit, — that is, anthropomorphized; (3) 
 man's feeling of dependence for his well-being 
 
 [200] ^ 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 on this power; (4) and his feeling, to some ex- 
 tent at least, of responsibility for his conduct 
 to this power; (5) add to these, certain emotions 
 and practices which follow naturally from such 
 a belief. 
 
 To vindicate, therefore, the essential truth of 
 this grouping of the elements of the personal life 
 involved, these conclusions must be justified. 
 First: The rational powers of the person, Man, 
 must be trusted to arrive at the truths of religion 
 just as completely, faithfully, and complacently 
 as they must be trusted to arrive at any form of 
 truth. But the arriving at any form of truth is 
 for man, in the broader meaning of the word, a 
 species of anthropomorphizing. All manner of 
 the facts of experience are, as a matter of course, 
 given, organized and limited, in terms of human 
 cognitive faculties. But these faculties are not 
 simply those assumed to be intellectual; there are 
 in reality no such simply intellectual operations, or 
 truths that reveal the nature of things or of minds, 
 to be derived from such operations. Pure logic, 
 if there were any such self-activity as pure logic, 
 could give us no presentation or conclusion cor- 
 responding to any reality. The assumption that 
 every individual real existence is akin to personal- 
 ity, and that the key to the true conception of its 
 nature and development is in the hands of man's 
 personality, so far as there is any key for the race 
 of men, is the only and fundamental guaranty 
 of every form of knowledge, practical or scien- 
 
 [201] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 tific, so-called. Deny this assumption, and you 
 have no foundation for any kind of truth. In- 
 deed, its denial is intrinsically self-destructive 
 and hopelessly absurd. When, then, we begin 
 worthily, whether from consideration for the 
 values of truth and the practical life, or of moral 
 and artistic and other even more exalted and 
 subtile and mysterious emotional values, to 
 conceive of the Universe in terms of personality, 
 we are not to be dissuaded or turned aside by an 
 unthinking outcry against " anthropomorphism." 
 Of course, we are anthropomorphists, — here as 
 elsewhere, but on the most lofty and well-as- 
 sured grounds. 
 
 Second, in estimating the nature and develop- 
 ment of the person as religious, we are fully war- 
 ranted, if we make large use of the values of 
 religion for stimulating the self-activity of will, 
 the sense of moral freedom and of responsibility; 
 for cultivating and supporting the higher flights 
 of imagination and the achievements of art in 
 architecture, painting, music and poetry; for 
 explaining and provoking the endurance of the 
 tragic side of personal life, its disappointments, 
 its losses, its struggles, its agonies, its defeats 
 of one sort exacted as the price to pay for its 
 successes of another sort; and for its supply of 
 satisfactions craved by the consciousness of wrong 
 doing and sin, and supplied by the hopes of 
 forgiveness and redemption. 
 
 It is only by keeping in mind these two truths 
 
 [202] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 that one can properly estimate the mcomparable 
 extent and value which religion may claim and 
 hold by a firm grasp, as the supreme thing in 
 the nature and development of the personal life. 
 The different names by which students of 
 comparative religion have called those particular 
 forms which they have aimed to establish as the 
 most primitive of all, when examined, confirm 
 our analysis of the fundamental elements as 
 already made. Call them Shamanism, Fetish- 
 ism, Totemism, Theriolatry, or any of the other 
 titles that may be given to the lower forms of 
 nature worship, and their essential character re- 
 mains the same. It is a vague and unreflectiag 
 spiritism. In fact, they all run into each other, 
 and through and through each other, with cross- 
 currents confused and innumerable. "The hu- 
 man soul," says De Groot, "is in China the 
 original form of all being of a higher order " (that 
 is, esteemed divine). "It is difficult for any be- 
 liever in Hinduism," says Sir Monier Williams, 
 "to draw a line of demarcation between gods, 
 man, and animals." "Who is a manito?" asks 
 the mystic chant of the Algonkins. "He who 
 walketh with a serpent, walking on the ground, 
 he is a manito," is the reply. The Buddhist 
 traveller of centuries ago found in India a tribe 
 who worshipped "a white-eared dragon, that 
 caused fertilizing and seasonable showers of rain 
 to fall within their country, and preserved it 
 from plagues and calamity." In the Travan- 
 
 [203] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 core District today, the people, when they see a 
 cobra approaching, say: "The god is coming; 
 make way for the divinity." This they say with 
 reverence rather than with fear. But even stones, 
 especially if they have an incomprehensible and 
 strange appearance, or are known as meteors 
 to have fallen from heaven, may have in them 
 a spirit to be worshipped or to be feared. When 
 a half-century ago the simple-hearted peasant 
 women of the back-country in India first saw a 
 locomotive and heard its signs of complete "ex- 
 haustion," — in other than the physical sense, 
 — they devoutly added to the water which the 
 tank was furnishing, a glass of milk and a bunch 
 of flowers, with prayers and invocations to Injin- 
 Mae ("mother-engine"). It was the mysterious 
 spirit which the imagination located there, and 
 which in some way above them, and so in some 
 hidden way, might control their interests, and 
 convict and punish them for wrong behavior 
 toward it, which stirred their minds and hearts 
 to the attitude of spiritual fear or affection. 
 How crude the superstition ! Undoubtedly. And 
 yet how natural ! This is the very fact for which 
 at present we are contending. For the crude 
 superstition can be raised by the development of 
 the personal life to the place of a rational con- 
 ception, having for the self-determining will a 
 supreme practical value. 
 
 But do all men have by nature at least thus 
 much of religion in the form of what the culti- 
 
 [204] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 vated, agnostics and believers, consider a super- 
 stition? Reference has already been made to 
 some of the reasons which led to a negative an- 
 swer from so many writers on the subject a half- 
 century ago. Among these writers, perhaps no 
 other had more popular influence than Sir John 
 Lubbock. But long since, every one of the wit- 
 nesses on which he relied for his attempt at 
 voluminous evidence has been shown to have 
 been misled either by haste, incompetence, or 
 prejudice. And what shall we say as to the 
 claim for authority of a writer who, for example, 
 after proving by a chance traveller that the 
 Brazilian Indians are without religion, himself 
 reveals the facts that they reverence the moon 
 and certain stars, believe in a principle of evil 
 which is invisible, and try to propitiate it, and 
 that they honor animals which they believe to 
 be messengers from the dead? We may even 
 at this date recall with a touch of amusement 
 that it required a bull of Pope Paul III (June 2d, 
 1537) to determine whether certain of our Red- 
 skins were possessed of a capacity for receiving 
 the Spanish type of Catholicity; were, in fact, 
 really human. But in some of the Redskins, 
 besides the motley mixture of popular spiritism 
 of the vague and unreflecting sort, we find clear 
 traces of the elements of an exalted type of 
 monotheism. 
 
 On this formerly contested point of the univer- 
 sality, and so the inevitable naturalness of some 
 
 [205] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 form of religious belief, feeling, and cult, it is 
 enough to quote only a few of those writers who 
 are justly entitled, after careful and prolonged 
 examination of the facts, to speak with authority. 
 "Obliged in my course of instruction to review 
 all human races," says the anthropologist Qua- 
 trefages, "I have sought atheism in the lowest, 
 as well as the highest. I have nowhere met with 
 it except in individuals or in more or less limited 
 schools." "Religion as we define it," says 
 Reville, the student of the subject from the com- 
 parative point of view, "is inherent in the human 
 mind and natural." "A people destitute of any 
 religious notions has never been discovered," 
 says the same author. And with him agrees 
 Roskoff: "Hitherto no primitive people has 
 been discovered devoid of all trace of religion." 
 "The statement that there are nations or tribes 
 which possess no religion, rests either on inac- 
 curate observation or on a confusion of ideas." 
 And looking, not so much over the earth, search- 
 ing out and misunderstanding savage and primi- 
 tive man through our lack of sympathy and 
 ill-founded pride of race and superiority of mod- 
 ern intelligence, but looking, the rather, back as 
 far as we can get any clear light of history, we 
 are cheered by having to say with Professor 
 Jastrow: "The essence of true religion is to be 
 met with in the earliest manifestations of the 
 spiritual side of man's nature." 
 
 That religion should differentiate itself into 
 
 [206] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 various kinds of religions follows as a matter of 
 course. Such differentiation is not an argument 
 against the rational nature of religion, bijt just 
 the opposite. All the most important and essen- 
 tial manifestations of personal life are subject to 
 similar changes. In and through the changes 
 they manifest the nature of its unity and the 
 laws of its development. To the vision which 
 can descry the direction and interpret the final 
 purpose of the changes, and only to this vision, 
 can the goal of personal life be revealed. In 
 these respects, the differentiation of religions is 
 no more discreditable to religion, than are the 
 different social customs and institutions, the dif- 
 ferent styles of architecture and painting, the 
 different schools of science, ethics, and philosophy, 
 to the different ideas, emotions, and practical 
 activities that evince and confirm the values 
 and verities of science, morality, and art. The 
 breaking up and bursting forth in various direc- 
 tions does not destroy, but rather manifests the 
 spirit's unity. 
 
 Many attempts have been made by the learned 
 to classify the religions of the world, in all times 
 of its history, according to some one or two prin- 
 ciples of classification. But the attempt has 
 only resulted in failure. The muddle of so-called 
 religions of the lowest order from the point of 
 intelligence and moral value, as summed up to- 
 gether under the title of a "vague and unre- 
 flecting spiritism," has already been remarked. 
 
 [207] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Philosopliical Hinduism, even as existing side 
 by side with Christianity and including some of 
 its boKrowed truths, continues to find room for 
 the worship of the lingam. The same thing was 
 true until recently of the Buddhism of Japan. 
 Of the three religions in one that prevail in China, 
 Dr. Martin has said: "They are not, as the 
 natives thoughtlessly assume, identical in sig- 
 nificance and differing only in the mode of 
 expression; ... to a certain extent they are sup- 
 plementary." In Thibet, too. Buddhism and 
 Roman Catholicism have to a certain extent 
 amalgamated; the beliefs of the former adopting 
 the rites and ceremonies of the latter. Modern 
 Babism is a mixture of Muhammadanism, Chris- 
 tianity, and Buddhism. And who can avoid the 
 impression that the form of religion largely in- 
 fluential in the most cultivated modern nations 
 is rather a worship of Wodin and Thor, or of an 
 abstraction of physical Force, or of an impersonal 
 Law, or of a metaphysical code, than of a Holy 
 Spirit in whose everywhere immanent presence 
 the spirit of Jesus found the exhaustless source, 
 and abiding resting-place, of his own personal 
 life? 
 
 But if we abandon all attempt at strict classi- 
 fication of religions, and agree with Sabatier's 
 declaration that "the systems of classification 
 which have been proposed have been rejected 
 one after another as either arbitrary or too nar- 
 row," we do' not surrender the right or shirk the 
 
 [208] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 obligation to weigh all religions over against 
 each other, and to make a sincere effort for their 
 relative estimation as tested by their "respect 
 for reality," their ministry to thought, imagina- 
 tion, and the higher emotions; but, above all, 
 by their power to stimulate and support the will 
 in its struggle toward the goal of personal life. 
 
 The causes which actually bring about the 
 differentiation of religions afford an interesting 
 and by no means insolvable problem. In the 
 case of the less highly developed forms, physical 
 influences and tribal differences are among the 
 more prominent of these causes. Nature is 
 always there; ancestors and heroes are always 
 in evidence. The early Romans personified the 
 clear sky as Jupiter and Juno, the nourishing 
 earth as Tellus, the germination and growth of 
 grain as Ceres; and Pales was a presiding deity 
 over their flocks. Everywhere the sun is lord of 
 the day, and the moon rides, seductive or poi- 
 sonous in her influences, overhead at night. Fire 
 is a wonderful and mysterious force, both terrify- 
 ing and purifying. In its totality, Heaven is 
 the Supreme Lord in China; and Heaven is so 
 far personified and glorified in its spiritual essence 
 by the best of China's thinkers as almost to lay 
 the foundations for an ethical Theism. 
 
 But the differentiation of religions from the 
 one spirit of religion is not necessarily its true 
 development. Something more than mere change 
 is necessary for this. Whatever we may see fit 
 
 [209] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 to imagine as to some original and relatively lofty 
 and pure form of religion, from which man has, 
 whether through his own fault or through a 
 series of inevitable misfortunes, fallen in his 
 religious estate, the testimony of history, so 
 far as available, reads the other way. The high- 
 est form of Christian Theism had its origins, 
 however, by Divine inspiration and revealings, 
 in the vague and unreflecting spiritism of Semitic 
 tribes. Surely no whiter lotus ever had its roots 
 in deeper or blacker mud! It was a marvellous 
 succession of great prophets, or men who spoke 
 fearlessly for righteousness, as they understood 
 it, in the name of a divinity whom they con- 
 ceived of as a spiritual Power interested in, and 
 making for, righteousness, who advanced along 
 this line the religious development of mankind. 
 
 It is not possible, however, for any particular 
 one of the many religions to attain the best pos- 
 sible for it in its own line of development, with- 
 out admitting influences from other religions 
 that are developing along other and different 
 lines. The righteousness of the tribal god Yah- 
 weh, even after the conception of his nature and 
 relations to men had been greatly elevated by the 
 work of the Hebrew prophets, could never in its 
 isolation from other Oriental and Greek thinking 
 have served for a God to meet the demands of 
 the expanding personal life of mankind. But it 
 was Greek Platonism and Stoicism which added 
 very important elements to the Hebrew concep- 
 
 [210] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 tion. These elements were not of merely specu- 
 lative value. They consisted in most stimu- 
 lating and profound thoughts concerning the 
 immanence of reason in the Universe of concrete 
 individual existences, and concerning the rela- 
 tions of Divine Reason to the life of man whom 
 it had made partaker of its own rationality. 
 These philosophies of religion supplemented and 
 enlarged the more naive and childlike views of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, and thus made possible 
 systems of theology which through Mediseval- 
 ism, and even down to the present time, served 
 to attract and hold the intellectual and specu- 
 lative resources of the personal life of religion 
 committed to the problems which the very 
 nature and destiny of personality propound. 
 
 But it was the life, teachings, and death of 
 Jesus, which set forth in reality, as never before 
 or since, the Fatherhood of God, the nature and 
 conditions of divine sonship, and the conception 
 of a Divine Kingdom, or religious community, 
 composed of all who, by faith and the practice of 
 righteous living in obedience, become true sons. 
 Here again, in the light of modern historical 
 research, it can scarcely be denied that the more 
 elaborate doctrine of an eternal Son of God, 
 kept in Heaven to be revealed in the fullness of 
 time, had its origins to a considerable extent in 
 sources lying outside of the Hebrew Scriptures 
 and the earliest Christian writings. 
 
 All the phenomena that are shown by the his- 
 
 [211] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 torical differentiation of religions illustrate, how- 
 ever, these two universally active imifying forces: 
 The psychological unity in function of the indi- 
 vidual soul; and the spiritual unity of the race in 
 its development under varied physical and social 
 conditions. 
 
 Although suggestions and relatively feeble ef- 
 forts at reaching some one higher ideal of the 
 Divine Being than that found in the so-called 
 nature religions, or in ancestor worship, or in 
 any exclusive tribal religion, are to be found 
 widely scattered abroad in all ages of man's 
 religious development, there are relatively few 
 that have carried this attempt at an ideal to any 
 satisfactory extent. Religions are many; relig- 
 ion has an essential unity; but religions adapted 
 to become universal are few. Indeed, of the 
 religions that have this quality of universality 
 in the highest degree, there are scarcely more 
 than two. These are Buddhism and Christianity. 
 In their past history, both of these religions have 
 frequently practised the effort to make them- 
 selves universal in thoroughly ignoble ways. 
 Sometimes this has been done — oftener perhaps 
 by Buddhism — by absorbing the practices and 
 beliefs of the lower and the lowest forms of re- 
 ligion that happened to be popular, in the places 
 and at the times of their strife quickly to uni- 
 versalize themselves. Sometimes this has been 
 done — oftener perhaps by Christianity — through 
 an effort to bind the minds of men to formulas 
 
 [212] , 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 without convincing their spirits of the vital 
 truths; or to control the emotional and practical 
 expressions of the religious life, by methods of 
 some kind of force rather than of persuasion 
 and example. Both these methods of what is 
 called "making converts" are alike unsuited 
 to the spread of religion, however much they 
 may seem to diminish the number of religions. 
 To slush the truth with falsehood, or to weld 
 truth and falsehood together under the heat of 
 persecution, do not eflfect a spiritual unity in 
 the life of the person as religious. In religion 
 more than anywhere else, respect for reality, 
 the moral issues, the satisfaction of the deeper 
 wants, the more aspiring sentiments, and choicest 
 practical values, must influence and guide the 
 self -determining personal will. 
 
 The intimate and important influences which 
 the religions of the world have constantly exer- 
 cised upon every branch and phase of human 
 civilization, could be illustrated without end. 
 The industries and politics of all ages have been 
 largely moulded by religious ideas and customs. 
 Agriculture, business, and the crafts have from 
 the most ancient times been given a religious 
 significance and have been largely regulated by 
 customs emanating from the temples and the 
 priestly class. Among all ancient peoples the 
 prevalent religion has been intimately inter- 
 woven with the mental picture of nature; and 
 thus scientific and philosophical ideas have been 
 
 C 213 ] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 very largely compelled to pay attention to each 
 other, and to religious truths, at every stage of 
 their advance. It has already been noticed how 
 interwoven are some of the sesthetical with some 
 of the religious sentiments and ideals, — as it 
 were, at their very roots. In even more impor- 
 tant and profound ways is the same thing true 
 of morality and religion. But to illustrate and 
 enforce this truth it is necessary to dig some- 
 what deeper after the pure gold of religion's 
 conception of the real Being of the world and of 
 the relations of this Being to the personal life of 
 man. 
 
 We turn, then, from the further survey of the 
 phenomena of differentiation and development 
 as offered by the variety of religions to a brief 
 but more careful analysis of the nature of the 
 place held, and the part played, by religion as 
 comprehending and dominating the whole spirit- 
 ual life of man. We turn our eyes inward 
 for a renewed survey of the nature of the per- 
 sonal life and of the conditions of its highest 
 development. 
 
 The central thing in religion as an experience is 
 a certain belief which guarantees to the believer 
 the reality of invisible and superhuman agencies, 
 to whom he stands in relations of advantage or 
 disadvantage and of at least quasi-moral obli- 
 gation. The belief necessarily calls forth and 
 associates inseparably with itself feelings of de- 
 pendence, of fear or affection, of reverence and of 
 
 [214] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 the sense of mystery. Through these feelings 
 it stimulates the will to acts of self-defence, of 
 propitiation; to ceremonials, to penances, to 
 self-inflicted retribution or vengeance upon others 
 who have by disregard of the gods endangered 
 their fellows, or to heroic self-sacrifice. The 
 feelings excited depend, of course, on the nature 
 of the relations between gods and men, which 
 follow from the nature of the belief. The various 
 attempts which have been made to reduce the 
 emotional origin of religion to any one of the feel- 
 ings referred to above only serve to obscure the 
 quite evident and altogether natural explanation of 
 the facts by a shallow attempt at parsimony. The 
 feeling of dependence is, as Schleiermacher held, 
 one of the most fundamental of the religious 
 emotions. But to derive from fear of the invisi- 
 ble and the unknown the emotional origin of all 
 religion is to overlook the powerful influence 
 which must account for the cheerful social inter- 
 course of the believers in many of the lower 
 forms of religion with these divine beings, such 
 as leads to cordial invitations to share with men 
 in their feasting and their games. Gods and 
 men do not get drunk together under influences 
 of fear alone. As the quaint old Chinese ballad 
 from the seventh century B.C. sings: 
 
 "And see! they place the goblet full. 
 In figure fashioned as a bull; 
 The dishes of bamboo and wood. 
 Sliced meat, roast pig, and potage good; 
 And the large stand." 
 
 [215] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 "When," says one authority, "the Spanish mis- 
 sionaries questioned the Indians as to the origin 
 of their gods, the usual reply was that they had 
 come from heaven or the air to dwell among them 
 and do them good." 
 
 But this diverse and even divisive form of 
 belief is subjected to three classes of unifying 
 tendencies which are at work in all forms and 
 lines of human development. These are the 
 social, the more distinctively intellectual or 
 scientific, and the philosophical, — meaning by 
 this the efforts and achievements of the pro- 
 foundest reflective thinkers upon the ultimate 
 problems of Reality and of the origin, nature, 
 developments, and destiny of man's personal 
 life. 
 
 The invisible spirits conceived of as belonging 
 to the same larger family or genetic group of 
 men very naturally order themselves after the 
 analogy of the prevailing family life. Thus 
 one family of greater gods may be enough for a 
 whole nation; while leaving to its own house- 
 door its own Janus, to each bit of ground its 
 own Lares, to every hearth its own Vesta. Rome 
 repeats essentially this family list as received 
 from the Greeks, though with a change of names 
 which has only a partial influence on the concep- 
 tions answering to the deified ones. And in 
 modern Japan, a mystical pantheism of the phil- 
 osophical Buddhist type, or a virtual deiflca- 
 tion of such scientific conceptions as Force and 
 
 [216] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 Law, tolerates for the common people and for 
 the women and children the home-worship of 
 deified ancestors or of national heroes. The 
 chief of the more virile or more intellectually 
 advanced tribe or clan overcomes or absorbs the 
 divine chiefs of other tribes and clans, and thus 
 makes a most convenient reduction in the num- 
 ber of the claimants for worship. 
 
 Still more powerful in its socially unifying in- 
 fluence is the development of vast monarchies, 
 where all that has value for the everlasting life 
 of the multitudes of the peoples culminates in a 
 single individual, or in a small group of individ- 
 uals. The monarch is God, or at least the only 
 real and powerful son of God; and his God is 
 the people's God, though with certain understood 
 licences to have some little gods of their own. 
 In the case of a great world-empire like ancient 
 Rome, the different religions may be left, under 
 the guise of a scornful policy of indifference, 
 to devour or absorb or otherwise eliminate each 
 other through the application of the law of the 
 survival of the fittest; or, finding itself annoyed 
 or endangered in political matters by some of 
 them rather than others, the state may take in 
 hand the task of diminishing their number, or 
 reducing them io an enforced unity. In the his- 
 tory of mediaeval and modern Christian nations, 
 there is not one of them which has not for long, 
 or repeatedly, made the attempt to unify belief 
 by using the seductive or restrictive influence of 
 
 [217] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 social considerations. Under the voluntary sys- 
 tem, and where there is no semblance of a state 
 church, as with us today, social influences are 
 powerful, and by no means always fortunately 
 or righteously so, for the unification or the divi- 
 sion of the essentials of religious belief. 
 
 Of all the social influences, at once most power- 
 ful, honorable, and benevolent, as bearing on 
 the unification of religious belief, is the growing 
 conviction, and the many practical forms which 
 the conviction is taking, of the brotherhood of 
 man. Ancient and time-honored social ideas 
 and customs are rapidly being modified, or are 
 altogether breaking down, under the rapidly 
 growing and wide-spreading conviction that all 
 men are, essentially considered, of one race. 
 The belief in the brotherhood of man is largely 
 a product of the religious belief in the Fa- 
 therhood of God. This belief is central and 
 distinctive in the two universal religions of 
 Buddhism and Christianity, — but especially 
 the latter of the two. Its roots, however, have 
 long since been nourished in other soU than that 
 of religious belief. 
 
 All social evolution, though with many back- 
 settings and twistings, has contributed proofs 
 for the essential brotherhood of man. Would 
 it misrepresent the facts to say that the political 
 and social belief has done as much to advance 
 the religious belief as the religious belief has 
 done to advance it? If there is one God, and 
 
 [218] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 God is my Father; then all men are my brethren, 
 and are, like me, potential sons of God. But 
 if all men are, in any real meaning of the words, 
 my brethren, then who is our common ancestor? 
 In forming our religious belief, for purposes of 
 the suggestions it may afford in solving practical 
 problems of social relations, it is not a common 
 progenitor after the flesh, — a mythical Adam 
 or an equally mythical ape-like creature, — about 
 the reality of which we are inquiring. It is, 
 the rather, a spiritual and present-day progeni- 
 tor, an immanent regardful source of life in right 
 social relations, which we are now eagerly seek- 
 ing. Hence the incomparable practical and 
 social value of the religious belief in the Father- 
 hood of God, as involving the brotherhood of 
 man. 
 
 The comforting belief in the Fatherhood of 
 God, with its practically beneficent corollary of 
 an obligation to show good-will, as to brothers 
 in one divine family, toward all men, does not, 
 however, avail to satisfy the reason of man in 
 its demand to understand the Universe and the 
 divine relations to it at large. The problem of 
 Universal Being is given to the human intellect 
 to work upon, and as far as possible progressively 
 to solve. As its work of research develops in 
 comprehensiveness and depth, it discovers more 
 and more the falsity of the pictures and theories 
 of creation and development proposed by re- 
 ligious myth and theological dogma, whatever 
 
 [219] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 of essential truth may be conserved as to depend- 
 ence of the World on God, amid the confusion 
 and chaos of imaginings as to the particular ori- 
 gins, sequences, and relations of dependence, 
 of its concrete existences. What are the actual 
 facts? What are the real causes which explain 
 the phenomena? What are the laws which the 
 order of the observed occurrences illustrates and 
 enforces? What are the ends toward which the 
 movements, the ceaseless successions of changes, 
 are looking forward and themselves effecting? 
 And, rising to the height of its audacity, the 
 intellect may propound for itself as its ultimate 
 problems, the Whence, the Whither, the Mean- 
 ing, the Substance, the Productive Principle, 
 and the Final Purpose of it all. But these are 
 questions which cannot be answered by rehears- 
 ing the simplicities of religious belief, strictly 
 so-called. 
 
 In the places and times where the religions of 
 a vague and unreflecting spiritism have sufficed 
 to satisfy the reflective consciousness, no con- 
 ceptions corresponding to those of the modern 
 sciences are to be foimd. Even in the lands 
 where the greater religions have had their origin 
 and earliest developments, the scientific spirit 
 has not prevailed; the methods of science have 
 had httle influence upon, and little part in, the 
 determination of the nature of Reality; the 
 scientific conception of the world has not as yet 
 struggled to its feet. And for centuries this con- 
 
 [220] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 ception had to contend with the most enlightened 
 of these rehgions, in order to get upon its feet. 
 The unfortunate effect of the struggle was, not 
 only to difference the scientific and the religious 
 view of the world, but to throw the two views 
 into the sharpest contrast, or even to enlist them 
 in the bitterest antagonisms. The cry has gone 
 forth: "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," 
 the God of Science or the God of Religion. But 
 the imperative demand of the moral personality 
 is: "Be sincere in your choice." You cannot 
 righteously be the devotee of both Baal and 
 Yahveh. 
 
 [221] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 TEE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS (Continued) 
 
 T is the nature of the person man to be both 
 scientific, a seeker for the truth of fact and 
 reality, and religious, a believer in the invisi- 
 ble and the ideal; and neither of the two seK- 
 directed activities of his rational life can be safely 
 or honorably sacrificed to the other. Neither of 
 the two forms of his rational development can 
 be eliminated or wholly suppressed by the other. 
 The path of the fuller realization of the rational 
 and personal life is a steady up-hill clinging to a 
 vision of the essential oneness of the two. 
 
 All the achievements of those positive sciences 
 which deal with the physical constitution of the 
 Universe have resulted in giving to It a sort of 
 unity to be described, if not as yet strictly de- 
 fined, in terms of Substance, Force, and Law. 
 Of the first of these three terms, so far as a meta- 
 physical analysis of its meaning when applied to 
 any concrete reality or to Reality in general is 
 concerned, the physical sciences prefer to fight 
 shy. It is much more convenient for them to 
 let theology flounder about in that muddy pool 
 than to dabble in it themselves. They are loth 
 to recognize the metaphysical truth that it is 
 
 [222] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 just as diflficult to tell what it is for one thing to 
 be of the same substance as another thing, as it 
 is to tell what it is for one person to be of the 
 same substance as another person. But unless 
 we talk, for scientific as well as for practical 
 purposes, about the sameness and difference of 
 substances, we cannot talk about things as though 
 they were realities, at all. It is a fortiori the 
 substantial qualities of things upon which the 
 Universe must rely for its Reality and its Unity. 
 
 If, however, the physical sciences are averse 
 to the metaphysical conception of substance in 
 general, they are fain ever and anon to put for- 
 ward some favorite claimant to the title of actu- 
 ally being the Universal Substance. Of course, 
 this is no longer such simple stuff as mud or water 
 or air or fire; or such a chaotic mixture as that 
 out of which Yahveh made in six days the present 
 scheme of things and animals and man. The 
 imiversal, the all-substance, is Ether, or Electric- 
 ity, or mere undifferentiated expanse of atoms, 
 or ions, or what not. 
 
 Let us take Ether as the most promising, if 
 not the least incomprehensible and mysterious of 
 the alleged universal substances. In order to 
 do some of the simplest things required of it, 
 such as to be the bearer of light with its enor- 
 mous rapidity, and also the inherent cause of 
 gravitation, it must combine within itself in the 
 most inconceivable degree those very qualities 
 which we find most opposite, most incompatible, 
 
 [223 J 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 in the concrete things which Ether has made. 
 Moreover, it must be infinitely cunning and ver- 
 satile in its ideas and means for self-differentia- 
 tion. These ideas must limit its self-activity 
 and furnish the means for carrying out into a far- 
 off perpetuity its innumerable subtle plans. It 
 must have the sources of self-differentiation in 
 itself; since there are nowhere, until it has pro- 
 duced them, any substances from which any 
 successful scheme of differentiation can be de- 
 vised. Surely then, the mystery of Ether is not 
 less than the mystery of a Creator Person called 
 God. Indeed, is it not thus far substantially the 
 same mystery, — namely the mystery of a imi- 
 versally dominating Will, putting itself forth in 
 an endless variety of ways, that, after all, when 
 more closely examined, and seen more nearly 
 in their totality, seem to combine into some 
 sort of Unity as, so to say, their net result. 
 
 The attempt to set up an impersonal Force 
 as the substitute of Personal Will, and derive 
 from it a satisfactory account of the real unity 
 which belongs in whatever measure to the scheme 
 of physical things, is not more successful. In- 
 deed, it is not so successful from the controver- 
 sial point of view. For the very idea of force 
 goes straight, for its derivation and for the justi- 
 fication of any attempt at its application to 
 things, to our experiences as personal wills. But 
 Force as mere force, all forces considered as im- 
 personal emanations of an essential unity of im- 
 
 [224] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 personal Force, cannot really do anything, or 
 really account for anything which is actually 
 done. The very principle of the conservation 
 and correlation of energy implies that the World, 
 as a whole, has in itself some immanent reason 
 controlling the various ways and amounts of dis- 
 tributing the Force of which it is the boundless 
 source. There is one energy of gravitation, and 
 there is another energy of light. There is one 
 energy of electricity and another energy of 
 heat. There is an energy called magnetism; 
 and there are as yet not definitely enumerated 
 energies assigned to the different classes of so- 
 called atoms. Indeed, the recognition of the 
 very existence of the atoms and their classifica- 
 tion depends upon the accurate differentiation 
 of their energies. But the last generation of 
 workmen in physical science — more eager, more 
 sagacious, and better equipped, if not more seri- 
 ous and more profound than any precediag genera- 
 tion — has discovered and partially revealed 
 the nature of forms of energy that, for subtle 
 cunning and tremendous output, surpass all 
 the wildest imaginings of the earlier scientific 
 mind. 
 
 It is only in a very partial way that we know 
 the exact terms on which these various kinds of 
 energies either engage to do a common work, or 
 pass each other by without the compliment of a 
 recognition, or rush into each other's arms in the 
 deadliest strife, from which, however, they are 
 
 [225] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 supposed to reappear, either unharmed and un- 
 diminished, or reduced forever to some form of 
 energy of another and characteristically different 
 type. 
 
 It is when they are all employed in framing the 
 constitution, encouraging, supplying, and limit- 
 ing the growth of living things, and presiding 
 over its earthly and heavenly environment, as 
 both the lords and the subjects of the evolution 
 of Life, that these different so-called energies 
 become of most close-fitting practical interest to 
 the personality of man. And this is just where 
 their nature grows nearest to his own nature as 
 essentially that of a self-differentiating will, 
 — skilfully adapting itself to certain ends which 
 bear plain marks of final purpose. For, indeed, 
 if we were to rule out of the Universe, in our 
 conception of it, all Life, what value would the 
 Universe have? What idea of value, or relation, 
 or differentiation of energies with unity of a force, 
 or of a Universe in any conceivable meaning of 
 the word, could possibly be retained.? But does 
 not all the scientific conception of the world of 
 things, working along the line of this attempt 
 at an explanation of their actual relations and 
 real transactions, end either in shadowy dreams 
 or ineffective and even intrinsically absurd ab- 
 stractions, unless the one Force of the Universe 
 from which its manifestations of energy proceed 
 has Mind immanent in itself to serve as a prin- 
 ciple of differentiation? Undoubtedly Yes; al- 
 
 [226] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 though it may not be the province or the duty of 
 science to give this aflSrmative answer. 
 
 That the conception of Law cannot possibly 
 be of either impersonal origin, meaning, or appli- 
 cation is even much more obvious. And yet 
 this word law is often written with a capital L 
 and used as though capacity to perform some- 
 thing as well as authority to set forth the way, 
 could be imparted by a marked departure from 
 the ordinary usages of English spelling. It 
 was this which more than a generation ago gave 
 to the witty Catholic writer. Father Dalgairn, 
 the opportunity to suggest that Mr. Spencer in- 
 variably used the capital TJ for beginning his 
 favorite abstraction (in this case, "The Un- 
 known"), for the same reason that the old-fash- 
 ioned English grenadiers used to wear such tall 
 hats: "To excite awe in the beholders." Laws 
 cannot do anything; they have no being, no 
 force, in themselves, so to say. Their announce- 
 ment, whether ia simple descriptive form or in 
 the more elaborate and imposingly scientific 
 form of the higher mathematics, cannot furnish 
 the satisfactory full account of any of nature's 
 most ordinary transactions. This is true, for 
 two quite sufficient reasons. They are at best 
 only approximately accurate formulas for the 
 way in which things would behave, if we could 
 catch them simply under one set of conditions 
 or relations. But, then, in reality, facts never 
 occur in simply one set of conditions or relations. 
 
 [227] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The single events, the actual transactions of the 
 real world, are always complicated by a great 
 variety of conditions and relations. Therefore, 
 a number of so-called laws invariably combine 
 or conflict, in order to afford their, for us, fullest 
 possible explanation. 
 
 Still further: The very conception of law is 
 an elaboration of a developed personal life along 
 lines of reflection. It is a formula that has 
 been thought out and stamped either with the hall- 
 mark of a certain factitious logical necessity, or 
 with the authority of moral consciousness in 
 approval of that which ought to be. To speak 
 of things as "under law" is to personify things; 
 to speak of Nature as "obeying Law," is to per- 
 sonify Nature. It is to regard the Universe as 
 subject to a sort of inner compulsion to behave 
 itself in an orderly and rational way. That it 
 always does so, is an assumption which we are, 
 as yet, far enough from having placed on a firm 
 basis of experience with external facts. 
 
 It would seem, then, that up to this point 
 there need be no quarrel between science and 
 religion over their conceptions of the Universe 
 as involving the realities of Being, Force, and 
 Law. Both have to the same extent tran- 
 scended the inscription on the shrine of Athene- 
 Isis: "I am all that was, and all that is, and all 
 that shall be; and my veil hath yet no mortal 
 raised." 
 
 At this point the more advanced form of re- 
 
 [228] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 flective thinking called philosophy, in its meta- 
 physical or ontological branch, intervenes, and 
 either confirms or confuses the conception of a 
 personal World-Ground, which the religious be- 
 lief in God requires if it is to meet the demands 
 of a rational development of personality. 
 
 The pitiful recoil of the human reason into 
 avowed agnosticism or atheism, when the concep- 
 tion of an Absolute Person or a Personal World- 
 Ground is offered to religious belief, is usually 
 due to two sets of considerations. One of these 
 involves a return to the negative argument that 
 the conception is the result of an illegitimate, 
 if not absurd, process of anthropomorphizing; 
 the other consists in juggling with such abstrac- 
 tions as "The Absolute," "The Infinite," and 
 similar terms, with the effect of giving to them 
 the active substance and terrifying force which 
 they might acquire if only they could be made 
 to correspond to any existent or imaginary 
 Reality. As to general objections to so-called 
 anthropomorphizing, enough has already been 
 said. The scientific conception of the Universe, 
 when stripped of the barest possible reference to 
 the tender interests of religious faith, is the result 
 of no other than the same kind and degree of 
 anthropomorphizing. But not even the most 
 abstract of the physical sciences, not even the 
 abstractions of the higher mathematics, is guilty 
 of such folly as is Agnosticism in its use of the 
 words infinite and absolute. Mathematics deals 
 
 [229] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 securely and with no small profit, with infinite 
 lines, and infinite space, and infinite and infinites- 
 imal quantities of a great variety of kinds. But 
 an infinite line is as much a line as is a line an 
 inch long. Infinite space, as long as it is meas- 
 urable or conceivable, retains all of the qualities 
 of finite space. Infinites and infinitesimals re- 
 tain all the essentials of being some quantity. 
 The positive aiid characteristic core of the thing 
 meant, the what-it-is of the matter in discussion, 
 is always retained; the negative prefix "in" 
 does not alter this; it signifies only the attempt 
 of the imagination to remove the limit of quan- 
 tity. Just as soon as this attempt takes the 
 turn of essentially destroying the nature of what 
 we are talking about, it is time to stop; lest we 
 begin talking nonsense. This would be true of 
 our infinite line, if by becoming infinite, it lost 
 all the qualities of a line and became something 
 totally different from a line; — let us say, a 
 beam of light or a charge of electricity. 
 
 The chance for humbug which lurks in the 
 merely negative use of such a term as "The 
 Absolute" is even more obvious. Absolved from 
 all relations, no reality or imagined thing or 
 person can possibly exist, or be conceived of as 
 existing. All existences are in relations to one 
 another and to the Universe as a whole. Not 
 one of them can possibly be known, or even con- 
 ceived of, as standing outside of all manner of 
 relations. 
 
 [230] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 Let us admit, then, that the incompatibility 
 of being personal and at the same time absolute 
 or infinite logically follows from these attempts 
 to deliver words from all manner of obligation 
 to represent at least conceivable realities. We 
 have lost nothing in our argument by the ad- 
 mission. With such speculative non-entities as 
 The Absolute, or The Infinite, the real concerns 
 of personal life are absolutely out of touch, and 
 from them infinitely removed. But against the 
 negative conclusion of Agnosticism, or the posi- 
 tive conception of an impersonal and purely 
 mechanical Universe, reflective thinking may 
 maintain the metaphysical basis of religious be- 
 lief in somewhat the following way. 
 
 "No one of the predicates or attributes of per- 
 sonal being can be conceived of in a perfectly 
 unlimited or absolute way. No one of them 
 is a solitary affair. Of necessity, they limit each 
 other; and both in their essence and in their 
 manifestation they are mutually dependent. Self- 
 hood is not a merely imrestricted aggregate of 
 independent activities. And instead of its per- 
 fection requiring or permitting the increase of the 
 unlimited and independent exercise of any of these 
 activities, the truth is quite the contrary. No 
 finite Self makes progress toward an escape from 
 its limitations by letting its psychic forces loose 
 from the control of wisdom and goodness. Neither 
 can wisdom and goodness grow in any human 
 Self, while the core of Selfhood, the control of 
 
 [231] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 will, is slipping away. The very constitution 
 of personality is such that its different attributes 
 are mutually dependent, reciprocally limited. 
 And the nicer and more harmonious the adjust- 
 ment becomes, in which wisdom and goodness 
 guide power, and power greatens under their 
 control, and for the execution of their ends, the 
 nearer does personality approach toward the 
 type of the infinite and the absolute. Or — to 
 cease from so abstract a manner of speaking 
 — growth toward the perfection of personality 
 can be attained, only as the various forces of per- 
 sonal activity, not only become greater in amount, 
 but also more harmoniously active in the unity of 
 the one personal life. 
 
 "On applying these considerations to the Di- 
 vine Being our conclusion is not hidden, nor 
 does it lie far away. Because God is essentially 
 personal, a self-conscious and rational Will, the 
 different predicates and attributes under which 
 he must be conceived are seZf-limiting and self- 
 consistent. This is to say that they limit each 
 other according to that conception of perfect 
 personality which is realized alone in God. But 
 the ground of this limitation is, in no respect, 
 essentially considered, outside of, or independent 
 of, God himself. God's infinite power is not 
 blind and brutish force, extended beyond all 
 limit whatever in a purely quantitative way; 
 God's infinite power is always limited by his per- 
 fect wisdom. Neither is the divine omniscience 
 
 [232] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 an ability to know, or mentally to represent, as 
 real and true, what is not real or what is irrational. 
 God's knowledge is limited by the laws of reason; 
 but in the case of the omniscient One, these 'laws' 
 are only the forms of his absolute rational life. 
 Reality is only that to which this Absolute and 
 Infinite Will imparts itself according to these 
 rational forms. 
 
 "But in even a more special way, it is to be 
 said that the moral attributes of God are self- 
 consistent limitations of certain of the metaphys- 
 ical attributes. If the divine justice or goodness 
 is to be considered as perfect, then these moral 
 attributes must constantly and completely qualify 
 the divine omnipotence. And to say that God 
 'cannot' do wrong, when once one is satisfied 
 that his righteousness is perfect, is not to limit the 
 divine power from without, or to render it any 
 the less worthy to be called omnipotence. In all 
 discussion of the problems evoked by the at- 
 tempt to apply such terms as 'infinite' and 'ab- 
 solute ' to God, it is the unifying and harmonizing 
 nature of his personality — or perfectly self- 
 dependent and seK-consistent Selfhood — which 
 affords both the theoretical and the practical 
 solution of the same problems. How can God 
 be infinite and absolute, and at the same time 
 personal? To this inquiry, one may answer: 
 Just because he is personal. How shall self- 
 consistency be introduced into this complex of 
 metaphysical predicates and moral attributes 
 
 [233] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY) 
 
 with which man's religious feeling and philosoph- 
 ical thought have filled out the conception of 
 God? By more and more expanding and per- 
 fecting this same conception as that of a perfect 
 and therefore infinite and absolute Self. 
 
 "This Being of the World is not only real, but 
 it is the exhaustless Source of all that is actual; 
 and It gives laws and life to all the forms and 
 relations of finite realities. It is known to us, 
 and can be conceived by us, only after the anal- 
 ogy of our own personal life. Such is the rea- 
 soned conviction that comes to enforce the feeling 
 of mystery, majesty, and limitless power and 
 extent, in space and time, that is called forth 
 by man's experiences of the cosmic existences, 
 forces, and processes." ^ 
 
 But the most profound and logical defence of 
 the metaphysical basis of religious belief, no 
 matter how consistent with the facts of positive 
 science, or the exigencies of reflection, comes far 
 short of satisfying perfectly the loftier senti- 
 ments, the tenderer emotions, and the strictly 
 moral consciousness, of man's personal life. Can- 
 did research of the external sort does, indeed, 
 more and more confirm a high degree of wisdom, 
 and a certain kind and amount of conspicuous 
 justice, to the credit of the Universe when 
 regarded in this way. The warning against in- 
 tellectual pride, and the reminder of the impas- 
 sable barriers of human reason, are everlastingly 
 
 ' Quoted from the author's "Philosophy of Religion," 11, pp. 117 ff. 
 
 [234] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 suitable to us all, whether cocksure theologians, 
 or heretical agnostics, or theists of the more 
 pronounced sort, or taking our position some- 
 where between the two extremes. Let no one 
 claim to comprehend the infinite and absolute 
 person until he has succeeded in quite unravelling 
 all the problems daily and momently presented 
 by his own dependent and strictly limited Self. 
 But the cry of piety is not to be stopped by the 
 fiction of a blow on the mouth from an alleged 
 divine hand. Reason may fitly — and, indeed, 
 by its divinely appointed nature, is bound to — 
 struggle to remove ever a ittle more the muffler 
 from its blinded eyes. 
 
 That there are many cunning contrivances, 
 and not a few supremely wise arrangements for 
 the betterment of things and of men, immanent 
 and active in the Universe, scientific research, 
 as well as daily observation, places beyond rea- 
 sonable doubt. Of a certain proportion of these 
 man has already learned how to avail himself 
 for effecting a vast improvement in the conditions 
 of his personal life. Were it not for his volun- 
 tary ignorance, laziness, and sinful folly, he 
 might make use of many more. He is loud in his 
 complaints of what in the World is against him, 
 without making one tithe of the effort necessary 
 to discover and appropriate the resources that 
 are plainly on his side. There is also scarcely 
 less doubt — though it must be admitted that 
 upon this point the facts are more difficult of 
 
 [235] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 confident interpretation — that a certain irregu- 
 lar and rough favoring of righteousness, and 
 practical discouragement of unrighteousness, is 
 set into the very nature of things. This was 
 recognized by the ancients in the conviction 
 that, although the mills of the gods ground slowly, 
 they did grind, and that "exceeding small." 
 They gave the conviction place in their religion, 
 when the plays of ^Eschylus exalted the character 
 of Zeus, the supreme God, as the avenger of the 
 righteous against the breakers of divine law. 
 With the Hebrews, Yahweh became established 
 in righteousness as the ruler of nature and of the 
 races of mankind. Among the Persians, and 
 their later Christian copyists, the Manicheans, 
 the problem^ of evil was not so easily to be solved 
 in terms of monotheistic religious belief. Ac- 
 cording to the Bundehesh, the Eternal and Ab- 
 solute Being, or First Cause, produced out of his 
 own substance two great divine beings. Of these 
 one, Ahura-Mazda, was good and true to his 
 Creator, A King of Light; and he became the 
 head of all that is pure and good in the World's 
 existence. But the other was Ahriman, King 
 of Darkness, head of an army of bad spirits, and 
 bringer of all kinds of evils into a good World. 
 Between the two a great world-struggle takes 
 place and continues through immense stretches 
 of time. But at the last Ahura triumphs over 
 Ahriman. For in truth, Ahura is rather the 
 only true and absolute divine being; Ahriman 
 [236] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 is but a limitation, a barrier, which will cease in 
 time, to his perfect and absolute goodness. And 
 thus the Persian religion comes very near to the 
 doctrine of a creation by a good God, that is 
 somehow doomed to "groan and travail together," 
 while it waits for the completion of a process of 
 redemption. In cruder form the North Ger- 
 mans and Scandinavians looked on the human 
 experience of good and evil in the one World as 
 though it could be explained by a struggle of 
 "the good world-preserving gods with hostile 
 elemental powers." 
 
 In the more tender speculative religions which 
 originated in India and took the forms of a mys- 
 tical pantheism, this dreadful, everlasting, and 
 as yet unsettled conflict between good and evil 
 is solved by the doctrine of illusion. It is the 
 mistaking of the illusory for the true and the 
 real, of that which is only maya for Atman, or 
 the true Self of things, which is the source of all 
 evil both physical and moral. To him who knows 
 Atman there is no real evil. He can say: "He 
 who knows the Spirit passes beyond all grief." 
 Naturally enough, this way of solving the prob- 
 lem of evil is too high and steep for the naked 
 and bleeding feet of the millions who toil over 
 the rough pathway of life. For them there re- 
 mains the need of strict compliance with ritual 
 and of obedience to the priest, if they will take 
 the only path which offers some mitigation of 
 the enormous preponderating burden of evil in 
 
 [237] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 their lives. Not much more adaptable to their 
 current needs is the lofty stoicism of the lame 
 slave philosopher Epictetus. "Slave! do you 
 really find fault with the world on account of 
 one bit of a leg? Will you not give it up to the 
 Universe? Will you not let it go? Will you 
 not gladly siurender it to the giver? " 
 
 The one personal nature of man, by its prog- 
 ress in positive knowledge of a scientific kind, 
 and its ripest fruit of reflective thinking, has 
 arrived at the conviction that its World is in 
 reality a Unity as respects its being, active ener- 
 gies, and modes of activity, or laws. The same 
 personal nature has shaped its religious belief 
 to the terms of monotheism, — that is, to the 
 belief that one personal Will is the source of all 
 the world's energies, one reason the source of all 
 the World's laws; and that, perchance, some 
 unity of a wise and righteous purpose runs 
 throughout the entire course of the World's evolu- 
 tion. And so this mighty unending struggle itself 
 becomes enfolded in the personality of God. 
 
 "Is the Universe friendly?" — in some such 
 words as these we may for the moment pictur- 
 esquely attempt our question in a seemingly 
 unbiased impersonal way. In terms of religious 
 faith: Is God perfectly good and holy, lovingly 
 disposed toward man, and actively seeking his 
 highest welfare, his supreme spiritual good? 
 
 The very putting of the question. Is the Uni- 
 verse friendly? shows how insistent and inevitable 
 
 [238] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 is the human, and therefore personal point of 
 view. For friendliness and unfriendliness are 
 alike terms which apply only to personal rela- 
 tions. And he who curses the world for its hid- 
 eous cruelty and senseless waste, 'as bearing upon 
 his happiness or the happiness of others, anthro- 
 pomorphizes as slavishly as does the saint who 
 thanks the good God for all the pains, and losses, 
 and disasters which have come to him or his loved 
 ones, upon his bended knees. Friend of mine, I 
 will not call a Universe that does not know what 
 it is about, or in some sort choose what it is 
 about; but neither can I regard such a Universe 
 as unfriendly. "Nature," says Parmenides, 
 "rules over all painful birth and all begetting, 
 driving the female to the embrace of the male, 
 and the male to that of the female." "The 
 formative power of the formless protoplasm 
 calls forth the highest admiration," affirms the 
 materialist Haeckel. But of what fault can 
 the Universe be guilty, or to what praise can 
 it be entitled, if no personal life is thinking, feel- 
 ing, planning underneath its awful mask.!* 
 
 But what does real and effective friendliness 
 require as between human beings; and what 
 psychological attitude, so to say, would have to 
 be conceived of as evincing friendliness between 
 the Universe and the race of men? And here 
 arises once more the question of personal values. 
 What is it which is worth most in personal life, 
 when judged by the best standards available to 
 
 [239] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 our ignorance and limited range of view? The 
 answer of the cultivated moral consciousness and 
 of the experience of the race is, surely, not alto- 
 gether dubious on a matter like this. Sensuous 
 happiness is not more worth than established 
 moral character; material prosperity is not of a 
 value beyond righteousness, whether for the 
 individual or for the multitude of the people. 
 And when we come to set the virtues over against 
 their opposites, as the kinds of conduct which the 
 race has agreed to approve as best, we discover 
 that hardship and suffering, and even torturing 
 pain, are the inevitable consequences of shaping 
 society according to their demands. Shall we 
 then, asks Epictetus, complain of the Universe, 
 or of Zeus, "because he has made us to be patient? 
 Because he has made us to be brave? Because 
 he has made them to be no evils?" 
 
 Somehow, if we take our counsels from the 
 best of the moral consciousness of the race, the 
 tragedy of this struggle between good and evil 
 is essential to the realization of the higher values 
 of personality, and is indispensable means of its 
 development. So clear to the thinker may this 
 truth become, and so complete his recognition 
 of the good resultant from overcoming the evils 
 which lie in the way of its more perfect realiza- 
 tion, as to encourage the declaration of the stoical 
 Emperor: "From Thee all things come; in Thee 
 all things subsist; to Thee all things return; 
 And so I say of the World: Dear City of God." 
 
 [240] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 But calling the World a City of God does not 
 make it really so; and a stoical satisfaction in 
 its present condition as answering to man's 
 longing for happiness and for purity does not 
 represent the highest development of the per- 
 sonal life as moral and religious. The truth is, 
 — strange and superficially unreasonable as it 
 appears on first reflection — that, as the material 
 acquisition of the race increases, the dissatisfac- 
 tion and the struggle between the forces of good 
 and evil are intensified also. "It is the yearn- 
 ing cry," says one writer, remarking on the dark 
 side of the modern world, "that goes through 
 all the people; as they advance in civilization 
 they feel the value of the goods they have sacri- 
 ficed for it." It is the World's suffering for its 
 moral failure, for its follies and its sins, the 
 increasingly clear knowledge of which introduces 
 and emphasizes the most terrible of all problems 
 for man's reflection and practical solution, the 
 darkest and most hopeless of his struggles to 
 realize the supreme values of the personal life. 
 
 Let it not be forgotten, however, that the 
 very struggle itself, and the more clearly the more 
 bitter the struggle is, affords the most nearly 
 final answer to the questions: What is it to be 
 a person? and What is the last issue, the deter- 
 mination of which, more than any other con- 
 ceivable, reveals the secret of personality? All 
 through the history of man's moral and religious 
 experiences indications and traces of a longing for 
 
 [241] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 right friendly relations with the gods, or with the 
 one Divine Being of the World, are frequent 
 enough. The "low-thoughted" moral and relig- 
 ious consciousness imagines that this good may 
 be realized, and its opposing evils escaped, by 
 some form of virtual bribery, or some device for 
 covering up the impurities of spirit, and the mis- 
 takes or more wilful transgressions of life. It is 
 of the very essence of personal development to ex- 
 pose the foolish fraud involved in all such "ways 
 of salvation." As the individual person, and 
 as the race, comes to a better understanding of 
 its needs, and of the causes of its most dreadful 
 weaknesses and woes, its cry for relief becomes 
 more insistent and continuous. But where shall 
 it look for such relief, — look with fair hope of 
 finding it, if not with an a priori demonstration 
 that it cannot be disappointed? The finite per- 
 son wishes to be on good terms with the Universe 
 which his reason has authorized and compelled 
 him to personify as realizing the perfection of 
 power and of a certain mysterious wisdom and 
 regard for righteousness as such. 
 
 As the moral and religious consciousness grows 
 more enlightened and sensitive, the longing for 
 reconciliation and for a spiritual unity with the 
 Divme Being grows correspondingly in the free- 
 dom of an unselfish will that seeks help in the 
 struggle with moral evil, and redemption from 
 its low moral estate. But may it reasonably 
 hope that the Universe will answer sympathet- 
 
 [242] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 ically and eflaciently to this longing? It is the 
 religion of redemption that answers "Yes" to this 
 inquiry. To its naive and comforting doctrine of 
 God the Father of mankind, it adds the hope of 
 God the Redeemer. Beyond a mere belief in a 
 perfect Personality, aloof in its perfection from 
 the anguish and struggle of those who, made in 
 his own image, imagine a fair picture for admira- 
 tion and worship of Him in their image, it favors 
 the faith which is the essence of the filial spirit 
 and the avenue through which the Life of God 
 may enter as a redeeming force into the life of 
 man. 
 
 It is the work of theology to examine the 
 grounds of such a faith as that to which reference 
 has just been made, to expound its nature and 
 limitations, its moral obligations, its assurances 
 and its rewards. And we are not writing about 
 it from the theological point of view. Two or 
 three remarks, however, may serve the purpose 
 of suggestions as to its place and value in the 
 development of personal life. Since this experi- 
 ence is a fact in the case of millions of persons, as 
 a fact it must be accounted for. To our think- 
 ing, no other explanation even approaches the 
 point at issue but that which places it in the 
 nature of Reality itself. That a Universe whose 
 Spirit, so to say, took no interest in man's long- 
 ing for filial relations with Itself, and in the 
 faith which opens the way to this reconciliation, 
 and in the intense and prolonged effort to realize 
 
 [243] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 the ideal of sonship fostered by this faith, could 
 give birth to this longing, and this faith and this 
 tragic struggle, bajQBes our attempts to make 
 even the beginning of an effort to understand. 
 How can the faith in a redeeming God found 
 itself in Reality, except in the fact of God as 
 Redeemer? 
 
 But this faith in God as the sympathetic and 
 efficient Redeemer of man, by the way of con- 
 verting him into the likeness of sonship, if it have 
 any ground in Reality, must be a process of devel- 
 opment, a historical evolution, under the con- 
 ditions of space and time, and of the natures of 
 both things and persons. To attempt at once 
 to free man from elements of ceaseless struggle, of 
 deferred hopes, of bitter suffering and the en- 
 durance of self-sacrifice, is to remove him from 
 Reality rather than to estabhsh him the more 
 firmly therein. The secret of man's personal 
 life and development lies hidden in the mystery 
 of a personal God who works in history to win 
 for this life its ultimate perfection. 
 
 Once more: For the individual who possesses 
 and cherishes this faith, the experience of its 
 effects is the supreme proof. His question is: 
 Does it actually redeem, or rather put and keep 
 me, so long and so far as I keep to it, in the way 
 of being redeemed? It has been declared by a 
 historian of the early Christian church: The 
 characteristic feature of the primitive commu- 
 nity is, that every individual in it, even the very 
 
 [244] 
 
THE PERSON AS RELIGIOUS 
 
 slaves, possesses a living experience of God. At 
 no time in the world's sad history has a thicker 
 pall been thrown over the hopes of a sudden and 
 complete redemption of the race than in these 
 recent years. But the same faith still clings to 
 the same hope, though as some far-oflf divine 
 event. Meantime we may remember, as a re- 
 cent writer on " The Essence of Christianity " has 
 said: "From the point of view of Philosophy the 
 absoluteness of Christianity is an hypothesis, 
 which must be tested by its ability to explain 
 all the facts, and as to the truth or falsehood of 
 which the final decision belongs to the future." 
 But to him who accepts the content of this faith 
 and has experience of its inner life, this religion 
 converts what might otherwise remain a faint 
 but rational hope into a firm and joyful convic- 
 tion. 
 
 [245] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 "^O what end of good or of evil is this 
 ceaseless procession of human beings, 
 in all the ages of human history, for 
 the most part unwittingly and heedlessly press- 
 ing onward? They all have the "potentiality" 
 of personality in them, since they are mem- 
 bers of the human species. But as individuals, 
 they have no choice as to their hereditary out- 
 fit for developing the ideals of personal life; 
 and few of them have any considerable control 
 over the environment which so powerfully in- 
 fluences this development. Indeed, vast multi- 
 tudes of this genus homo never get any start in 
 the process of unfolding and improving the 
 meagre gifts which nature has so grudgingly 
 bestowed upon them. They are abortions, — if 
 not physically, at least mentally and morally. 
 And if they effect that lower form of "coming to 
 oneself" which was described in the earlier chap- 
 ters, they get little or no further beyond. Ambi- 
 tion or opportunity fails them; ignorance that is 
 invincible under their circumstances, or oppres- 
 sion and blindness deliberately afflicted by the 
 [246] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 few favored ones of their fellows, hamper or 
 extinguish all power to rise even in thought to 
 the appreciation of the higher values of the per- 
 sonal life. They scarcely know themselves as 
 persons at all, — however clearly they may repre- 
 sent in their conduct, in a rudimentary way, all 
 the essential characteristics of the more exalted 
 stages of the personal life. Does not the lament 
 so picturesquely described in the line of Greek 
 poetry, "From a tomb forth springing to a tomb 
 I journey," apply to the vast numerical majority 
 of the human race? 
 
 This impression derived by a superficial survey 
 of human history is only too amply confirmed 
 by the facts of the biological and psychological 
 sciences. To the researches of the former. Nature 
 appears as indifferent to the values of personal 
 life as to any other form of life; or, for that mat- 
 ter, of inanimate things. Pain, decay, and death 
 are the price that must be paid for living at all; 
 and men are far enough from being an exception 
 to the inexorable law. Indeed, in some respects, 
 taken at their face value, some of her dealings 
 with the choicer aspirations and the finer feelings 
 of humanity seem as though shaped and executed 
 in a spirit of contempt and scorn. It is as though 
 the jealous gods were asking. What right have 
 you to build towers of Babel to withstand the 
 floods we bring upon you.? or, as though an angry 
 Zeus were perpetually chaining some Prometheus 
 to the cold rock, and taking pleasure in the vul- 
 
 [247] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 tures plucking at his vitals, just because he had 
 dared to discover fire. 
 
 So, too, if we approach the study of human 
 nature from the psychological point of view, 
 but without sympathy and with no care to look 
 into the heart of things moral and spiritual, we 
 cannot in unprejudiced devotion to the so-called 
 "naked truth," form any very high estimate of 
 the mentality or the morality of the average 
 man. We may set on one side the numberless 
 idiots and almost or quite hopelessly defective 
 of the race. But just above their line, and not 
 so very far above it, taking all races in all human 
 history, in the "lump," as it were, lie the vast 
 majority of mankind. In active appreciation of 
 the value of truth, ia thirst for the truth, in open- 
 ness of mind and quick response to the effort to 
 enlarge and heighten the mental horizon, these 
 multitudes seem little above the more intelligent 
 of the animals. The same thing is scarcely less 
 true, when we inquire after that purity of motive, 
 and serious estimate and high prizing of moral 
 issues, which constitute the essence of genuine 
 morality. The current opinions on matters of 
 practical ethics among the multitudes of the 
 "most Christian nations" are incalculably be- 
 low the standards set by obvious moral ideals; 
 while the current practice is still notably below 
 the level of the current opinions. And when it 
 comes to the religious beliefs that do most honor 
 to the human reason in its struggle to apprehend 
 
 [248] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 truly — not to speak of the impossible task of a 
 full comprehension — the Divine Being of the 
 World, and the nature of the relations which 
 should characterize man's attitude toward God 
 as Father, and to his fellows as brethren with 
 him of the same Father, the universal failure is 
 still more conspicuous. Perhaps the rarest of 
 all the examples of personal culture, and of even 
 a relative success in attaining the ends of the 
 person as religious, are the individuals who, 
 when known profoundly, are gladly recognized 
 as approaching the ideal of sons of God. But 
 as for the community of His avowed followers 
 — call it by whatever name you will, and search 
 it out in whatever land and in whatever age you 
 may — the sarcasm of Schleiermacher remains 
 true: "The real Church is mostly invisible; the 
 visible church is mostly not real Church." 
 
 This dark picture of the nature, development, 
 and probable destiny of personal life, true to the 
 facts as it undoubtedly is, does not represent the 
 whole truth. If it did, our inquiry. What is it 
 worth while to be a Person? would end in dis- 
 appointment; the hope of a clue even to the ex- 
 istence of any key to the Secret of Personality 
 would have to be abandoned. But the most 
 purely unemotional and unidealistic point of 
 view, when taken and adhered to in an unprej- 
 udiced way, justifies us in drawing a brighter 
 picture of the nature, development, and prob- 
 able destiny of personal life. For somehow or 
 
 [249] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 other Nature has brought out of her womb a 
 race of personal beings. Under the laws of he- 
 redity the creature Man has come into existence 
 and has managed to maintain himself against all 
 the destructive forces of this same Nature. Even 
 the very rigor of his natural discipline has sharp- 
 ened his intellect and developed the skill of his 
 hand. In the development of the higher ner- 
 vous centres, in ingenuity of resources, in variety 
 and extent of power to provide for his own wants, 
 and in ambition and success in acquiring the mas- 
 tery of natural resources for the allurement of his 
 ambitions, he has, in fact, already arrived at a 
 position which enables him to dominate all the 
 other animals. More than this, whatever he 
 may once have been, and however long and 
 tortuous the course of his evolution may have 
 been, he is, in fact, no longer merely animal. 
 He has capacities and qualities of mind and heart 
 and will which are not possessed by the most in- 
 telligent species of the animals. 
 
 And as, at this stage of inquiry, we pass over 
 from the point of view of the biological sciences 
 to that taken by psychology when it studies 
 human nature in a broad but still unemotional 
 and unidealistic way, we are amazed at what 
 this creature of Nature has, with all his blunder- 
 ing and folly, already accomplished for his own 
 scientific and social development. To note these 
 facts with frank admiration, it is not necessary 
 to glorify science overmuch, or to be greatly 
 
 [250] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 satisfied with any of the existing social and po- 
 litical arrangements. But the outburst of the 
 modern sciences of nature, and the growth of 
 knowledge and of control which they already 
 aflford, and which they confidently promise in 
 still larger measure for the future, is a thing very 
 wonderful and highly creditable to the rational 
 nature of man. And if we were at liberty — as 
 we are not — to regard man's contrivances for 
 social and political association with his fellows 
 without emphasizing their moral imperfections, 
 we should be warranted in saying something 
 alike praiseworthy of them. It is because they 
 are in so many respects ethically stupid and iniq- 
 uitous that we cannot say the same things of 
 man's social and political achievements that we 
 say of his scientific. 
 
 It is, however, such a siu'vey as we have en- 
 deavored to take of the essential characteristics 
 of personality as they come to their flowering in 
 the higher developments of personal life, that alone 
 avails to set before the mind its choicest excel- 
 lences, its most sacred obligations, its most 
 favorable opportunities, its supreme values, and 
 its legitimate hopes of an incomparable destiny. 
 This survey enables us to place ourselves firmly 
 on the ground assumed by Immanuel Kant, 
 when illogically but virtually retreating from the 
 agnosticism of his earlier work, he declares, to- 
 ward the close of his Analytic of Pure Practical 
 Reason (Chapter III) his confidence that there 
 
 [251] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 is in man a "higher nature," which, with its 
 respect for the moral law and its well-grounded 
 faith in God, enables him to transcend the limits 
 of time and sense. Of this higher nature he 
 rhapsodizes in the following way: "It can be 
 nothing less than a power which elevates man 
 above himself (as a part of the world of sense), 
 a power which connects him with an order of 
 things that only the understanding can conceive, 
 with a world which at the same time commands 
 the whole sensible world, and with it the em- 
 pirically determinable existence of man in time, 
 as well as the sum-total of all ends (which total- 
 ity alone suits such unconditional practical laws 
 as the moral). This power is nothing but fer- 
 sonality, that is, freedom and independence on 
 the mechanism of nature, yet, regarded also as a 
 faculty of a being which is subject to special 
 laws, namely, pure practical laws given by its 
 own reason; so that the person as belonging to 
 the sensible world is subject to his own personal- 
 ity as belonging to the intelligible (supersensible) 
 world. It is then not to be wondered at that 
 man, as belonging to both worlds, must regard 
 his own nature in reference to its second and 
 highest characteristic only with reverence, and 
 its laws with the highest respect." Kant has 
 already said that respect, in this meaning of the 
 word, "applies always to persons only, never to 
 things." 
 
 It is this respect for the reality of personal life, 
 
 [252] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 from which, if from any source whatever, we 
 must derive our true and influential convictions 
 concerning the nature, chances for development, 
 hopes as to destiny, of the individual and of 
 the race. But as we have already seen, — and, 
 indeed, at every step in our attempt at an answer 
 to the question. What is it to be a person? the 
 fact has become more evident, — this reality 
 must be looked at from two points of view; and, 
 thus looked at, the deductions derived from these 
 two points of view are by no means easy to unite 
 in one indisputable conclusion, or even to bring 
 into a tolerable state of harmony. It is this 
 belonging to two worlds which envelops the personal 
 life in mystery. As a being strictly limited by 
 the inexorable conditions of the world of time 
 and sense, man is one sort of a thing; as the 
 creature and the creator of a world corresponding 
 to his ideals of knowledge, of morals, and of 
 religion, and of a social condition fashioned 
 after these ideals, he is quite a different being. 
 The problems of personal nature, personal devel- 
 opment, personal values, and the goal of the 
 personal life, appear markedly different when 
 approached from the scientific point of view, and 
 from the point of view to which imagination is 
 lifted by moral and religious faiths and hopes. 
 But the Universe, in spite of the fierce and con- 
 tinuous conflict within It of the forces of good 
 and evil, is One; and man — the individual and 
 the race — appears as inextricably involved in 
 
 [253] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 this struggle to attain the unity which can afford 
 the only satisfactory ending of the conflict to 
 realize his true and real Self. 
 
 If we ask for the goal of personal life, so far 
 as it can be fixed for the individual by the posi- 
 tive sciences, there is no doubt about the answer. 
 Man's life, like that of every other physical or- 
 ganization, must be limited in duration and oppor- 
 tunity, subject to decay of body and weakness of 
 mental capacity; and it must end in physical 
 death. This is the fixed and irremovable goal of 
 the personal life of the individual man. As to the 
 goal of the race of personal beings the positive 
 sciences have not a few more or less plausible 
 theories, but no sure information. They can 
 present us only with a succession of conjec- 
 tures. The supply of heat will fail and leave the 
 world unfit for all animal existence, a burnt-out 
 coal, as unable to sustain physical life as is the 
 cold but beautiful moon which poets and lovers 
 celebrate to increase the charms of personal life 
 in the brief moments of the 'passing present. Or, 
 perhaps, there will be a sudden and disastrous 
 accession of heat through the crashing into this 
 insignificant planet of some star, or fragment of 
 a star, which has broken loose from its regular 
 orbit and run amuck, as it were, across the sky, 
 — that sky which vied with the moral law as 
 an object of pure, supreme sublimity, in the 
 mind of the great philosopher. Or, yet again, 
 according to some Malthusian formula, the will 
 
 [254] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 to live will so unguardedly follow the instinct of 
 propagation as to outstrip all possible food sup- 
 ply; and perforce be limited by starvation to a 
 percentage only of its otherwise possible individ- 
 ual members. Or, since periodically recurrent 
 wars are determined by mechanical laws of illu- 
 sions and delusions and of lies born of greed and 
 ambition; and since science is constantly in- 
 creasing the means of precipitate and wholesale 
 slaughter; a goodly portion of the best and 
 bravest of the race, if not the whole of it, is 
 hopelessly consigned to reach its destined goal 
 by the absurd path of needless suicide. 
 
 But none of these predictions as to the unavoid- 
 able destiny of the race of personal beings are 
 scientifically justified; there are known, or con- 
 jectured, or reasonably hoped-for, compensa- 
 tory forces and laws at work to avert such awful 
 disaster; and on the whole, both the physical 
 and the social sciences look forward rather con- 
 fidently to an improvement, indefinite in time 
 and quality, "by and large," of the human 
 race. 
 
 We fitnd room, then, for depicting a better goal 
 of personal life as it opens before the faiths and 
 hopes of the spiritual nature of man. And while 
 we cannot claim scientific exactness for this view, 
 or support it by a strictly logical demonstration, 
 we need not on that accoimt apologize in a timid 
 or craven way for the insights which come to this 
 nature when by an activity of self-determining 
 
 [255] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 will it releases itself for the appreciation of the 
 truth as it appears when regarded from its own 
 appropriate point of view. For this nature, 
 with its faiths and hopes, is a fact; and it is not 
 for no practical purpose that it is a fact. There 
 is truth which cannot safely be disregarded in 
 the semi-mystical declaration of the Brahma 
 Baiharta Purana: "The essence of all divine 
 knowledge is that which opens the spiritual eyes 
 of the ignorant, and destroys doubts and con- 
 fusion." And we have a personal experience, 
 not to be flouted at but capable of being recited 
 in millions of varying but essentially identical 
 forms, when we quote one of the world's greatest 
 thinkers, the Church-father Augustine: "For 
 when I found Truth, then found I my God, the 
 Truth itself. . . . And now will I stand, and be- 
 come solid in Thee, in my mould. The Truth." 
 I have said "in millions of varying but essentially 
 identical forms." If, then, "amid the many 
 opinions about the gods and the generation of 
 the Universe, we are not able to give notions 
 that are exact and consistent with one another, 
 do not wonder at that" (Plato). The individual- 
 ity of personality is both the explanation and the 
 justification of the differences. Every individ- 
 ual, in order to get the fuller value out of his re- 
 ligious belief, must be able to say of his God: 
 "He is my God." But this does not diminish, 
 but, the rather, increases the significance and the 
 value of the truth: "However men approach me, 
 [256] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 even so I accept them, for the path men take from 
 every side is Mine." (Bhagavadgita.) 
 
 It is, therefore, with no sense of failure that 
 we close our discussion of the goal of personal 
 life with a series of suggestions, or mere hints, 
 as to that completer answer which every indi- 
 vidual person must make more definite and com- 
 plete for himself, in both its theoretical and its 
 practical aspects. We have been hitherto lead- 
 ing up to the inquiry. What is there really in 
 personal life which makes it best worth while 
 the living; or indeed worth living at all, as re- 
 garded from the point of view of its ending? 
 To be stumbling on, in pain and weariness, to- 
 ward a goal that has no worth in itself and can- 
 not, therefore, consecrate or justify the way; 
 — this would seem to be an absurd folly for a 
 being endowed, from whatever source, with a 
 measure of rationality and freedom of will. 
 
 To such an inquiry as that just raised, the first 
 and most obvious reply is this: All values, and 
 all means for the estimate and appreciation of 
 values, must be inherent in the nature and de- 
 velopment of personality itself. "Beyond this 
 life" (that is, the personal) itself, there is noth- 
 ing conceivable that has value, or that can fur- 
 nish any standard of values. Beyond the value 
 of sharing in the highest and best of this personal 
 life, there is nothing, either as a type of exist- 
 ence, or as a continuous state, that possesses any 
 comparable worth. What shall a man give (or 
 
 [257] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 take) in exchange for his (personal) life? To 
 answer Nothing, as though one were estimating 
 values in a comparative way, does not go to the 
 depths of such a question. For, not only is there 
 nothing in value to be compared with this life, 
 but there is no standard of comparison outside 
 of, or beyond, the issues of this life. It embodies 
 all values in itself. 
 
 But what is it in this personal life that gives 
 to it its own incomparable value, and its right 
 critically to estimate all other values, whether 
 for purposes of theoretical comparison or prac- 
 tical acceptance or rejection? Our investiga- 
 tion of the inquiry. What is it to be a person? 
 has revealed a scale of values, some higher, some 
 lower, as incorporated into the very nature of 
 personality. Many things are of worth to it, and 
 their possession is to a certain extent worth while 
 as the reward for personal endeavor. But these 
 are all means to an end, helps to progress toward 
 a goal. To the moral and religious conscious- 
 ness of the individual, this goal presents itself 
 as the realization of an ideal, the ideal of a per- 
 fectly developed Self, — of a Selfhood entitled 
 to be called from the moral point of view, "a 
 really good man," and from the religious point 
 of view, "a true son of God." In this ideal we 
 sum up for the individual, the highest potential 
 values, the supreme end of the personal life. We 
 seem to have discovered that the self-determin- 
 ing will, when guided by intelligence and rightly 
 
 [258] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 motived, which proposes to live loyally in devo- 
 tion to this ideal, is itself, of all valuable posses- 
 sions for the individual person, the possession 
 beyond all price. This ideal sets the goal to the 
 personal life. That this life has value, and a 
 great deal of value, and a species of value that is 
 unique and supreme, — this has been the fine 
 discovery which we have made, the treasure- 
 trove we have imearthed; and we are not going 
 to throw it away, or cache it, or surrender it, to 
 the first argument for a contesting claim. Indeed, 
 as judged by every profoundest argument, as tested 
 by every most conclusive process of analysis, and 
 as weighed in the truest and most delicate scale 
 of judgment, just to lead this life, because it is 
 the only kind of life worthy of a person, appears to 
 us the thing best worth our all to do. In a word, 
 the values of personal life are at their highest as 
 set before us in 
 
 "... all our rarer, better, truer self. 
 That sobbed religiously in yearning song. 
 That watched to ease the burden of the world, 
 ' Laboriously tracing what must be. 
 And what may yet be better." 
 
 To strive toward the attainment of this goal of 
 the personal life is the end-all of getting, and using, 
 and enjoying goods of every kind. For the 
 perfection of this life, of the life of duty and 
 virtue and courageous and constant loyalty to 
 the personal ideal, is the expression of the total 
 meaning, and the only complete attainment, of 
 
 [259] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 the worthiest and most exalted uses of personality. 
 When we ask, whether flippantly or thoughtfully, 
 What is the use and what the reward of pursu- 
 ing, and of winning in the pursuit of this ideal? 
 we ask a meaningless question. Its usefulness 
 sets the standard for all other uses; the reward 
 for its attainment is the ineffable but eternally 
 valuable riches.^ 
 
 But this exalted view of the goal of personal 
 life which is demanded for the satisfaction of 
 man's "higher nature," of the capacities and 
 obligations which seem to destine him for exist- 
 ence and development in a so-called "super- 
 sensible world," as a perfected person morally 
 and a true son of God, only intensifies the con- 
 trast with the matter-of-fact view of the positive 
 sciences. By intensifying the contrast, it deepens 
 the mystery of personality. At the same time 
 it calls upon the beliefs of religion to open a door 
 of relief. This religion does for the individual 
 by awakening and fostering the hope of immortal- 
 ity. Thus the problem. What is the secret of 
 personality? becomes inextricably connected with, 
 if not with perfect strictness dependent upon, the 
 answer to the problem: Does death end all for 
 the individual? May a person, after he has come 
 to his bodily self, and its natural development 
 has terminated in decay and physical death, 
 
 • Certain sentences contained in the last few pages are, for the 
 most part, taken with one or two verbal changes from the au- 
 thor's " What Ought I to Do ? " Chapter XI. 
 
 [260] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 hope that the person as spiritual will continue 
 his journey toward the realization of an ideal 
 personal life? 
 
 Neither the natural belief in the immortality 
 of the individual, or the psychological conception 
 of the human soul as an essentially indestructible 
 entity, really affords a satisfactory answer to the 
 question we have just raised. Indeed, when this 
 belief is coupled with the statement that the desire 
 for a life after death somehow commits the consist- 
 ency inherent in the Universe to provide the sat- 
 isfaction of this desire, the argument is not true 
 to the facts; nor is it logical in its conclusions. 
 The truth is that countless millions of the human 
 race have been for countless centuries, and in 
 spite of any improvement in their material con- 
 dition, or — what is yet more important — re- 
 lease from the burdens of superstition, are still 
 looking to the certainty of existence after death 
 with fear rather than with desire or hope. In 
 grief and bitterness, or with a mild or a sullen de- 
 spair, they are asking themselves the question in 
 Marlowe's Dr. Faustus: 
 
 " Why wert thou not bom a creature wanting soul?" 
 
 And did not Sakya-muni, the founder of Bud- 
 dhism, lay the foundations of his hope of relief 
 from the fear of death by the suffering multi- 
 tudes, in a denial of the substantiality of the 
 human soul.'' Yet even so, the belief would not 
 die, when the fear that it were true had been 
 
 [261] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 theoretically removed. The doctrine of Karma, 
 or the inescapable and eternal consequences of 
 personal imperfection, remained to excite fore- 
 boding and terror rather than to serve as a ground 
 of courage and cheerful struggle toward the per- 
 fected goal of personal life. And so the secret of 
 personality was unrevealed to hope, by Buddhism. 
 
 It is small wonder, if the continuance of per- 
 sonal life after bodily death offers no improved 
 opportunity for the realization of the ideals of 
 personality, that a positive recoil from the pros- 
 pect should be the attitude of the rational mind. 
 Even for a person, just to live on, and only that, 
 can scarcely seem worth the while. To live on 
 in the same kind of misery, or even worse, and 
 to struggle on as in this life, only more hopelessly 
 and bitterly, is not a charming future to con- 
 template. To the emotional and practical de- 
 mands of the personal life, immortality under 
 such conditions would be no goal worthy of 
 either wish or endeavor. Its failure before the 
 bar of judgment, of the reasoning faculties of 
 human nature, would be no less conspicuous. 
 Indeed, the mystery of personality becomes the 
 deeper and darker, the longer its fruitless and 
 agonizing strife for unattainable ideals is imagined 
 to be continued. Extinction of the personal 
 life with the death of the bodily self would force 
 upon our reason the fateful conclusion: That 
 which alone has the appearance of being valuable 
 and which sets the standard for all estimates of 
 
 [262] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 value, is indeed itself of no real and lasting value. 
 The conclusion of Schopenhauer's philosophy 
 would seem warranted: that the total suppres- 
 sion of the will to live, on the part of the individ- 
 ual and of the race, is the only course of wisdom. 
 Thus into the gulf of night disappears the secret 
 of personality. The disappearance is equally 
 complete, whether it be brought about by physics, 
 physiology, or certain forms of religious belief. 
 
 In the sight of a mystical pantheism the goal of 
 effort toward the ideal of personal life is raised 
 to a much higher degree of attractiveness; al- 
 though a critical examination of its conception of 
 immortality shows that the problem of the mean- 
 ing and value of personality is still left unsolved. 
 In this view, it is not the extinction of the life of 
 the individual which quite terminates his person- 
 ality, but the absorption of his personal being as 
 an individual into the universal life of the Ab- 
 solute. The Brahmanical type of immortality 
 conceives of the soul of the individual as return- 
 ing, a being no longer having self-determining 
 will or self-consciousness, to Atman, or the World- 
 Soul, from which it originally came forth. Its 
 coming-forth was into a world of illusion and 
 unreality; its return, if ever at the end of a round 
 of painful existences it at last becomes worthy, 
 is the ideal existence called Nirvana. But though, 
 as Professor Hopkins has said, "Nirvana meant 
 to Buddha the extinction of lust, anger, and 
 ignorance," — this primarily and in its negative 
 
 [263] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 aspect, — we seek in vain for any positive con- 
 ception of the goal set by pantheism to the per- 
 sonal life, which does not either identify it with 
 the extinction of personality, or convict it of 
 internal inconsistencies which deprive it of all 
 application to any psychical reality. 
 
 It is, then, to the religious belief in a spiritual 
 union with the Absolute Person, whom religion 
 calls God, a union after the type of sonship, 
 that we must look for a conception of immortality 
 which will conserve the higher and eternal values 
 of man's personal life. This conception may be 
 found very far back in human history, and very 
 widely distributed over the surface of the earth. 
 Traces of it may be discovered among rude tribes 
 and peoples, not ordinarily thought to be far 
 advanced in the theory or cult of religion. They 
 imagined some place over the moxmtains, or 
 over the seas, or on the top of some mountain, 
 where the more fortunate of their fellows might 
 after death live in happy communion with their 
 ancestors and with the immortal gods. The 
 Chilians located their Paradise among the peaks 
 of Mexico, where was the joyous garden of TUo- 
 can, the abode of their dead ancestors. But it 
 was perhaps Egypt which, of all the nations in 
 ancient times, most prized the promise of an 
 immortality spent in communion with divine 
 beings. To attain this, the "Maxims of Ani" 
 pointed out the way: "Give thyself to God, 
 keep thyself continually for God; and let to- 
 
 [264] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 morrow be like today." Thus an independent 
 individuality might be continued with the gods, 
 in an existence especially devoted to the success- 
 ful and happy pursuit of agriculture in the "fields 
 of the blessed." The lofty ethics cultivated by 
 the hope of such a salvation as gave the sanc- 
 tion to this hope of immortality, remains on re- 
 cord to this day in the Egyptian "Book of the 
 Dead." But this goal of the personal life, alas! 
 was open only to the few. For at the "ferry of 
 death the profane multitude, not being suffi- 
 ciently concentrated to resist the inroads of de- 
 cay, vanish into air, and cease to be; while the 
 favored few, by dint of persevering effort, subdue 
 the animal nature and weave its fibres into a 
 compact unity that defies destruction." Among 
 the ancient Greeks the belief in the immortality 
 of the individual person was well-nigh imiversal; 
 and in their philosophy the soul of man was held 
 to be akin in its nature to God. It must have 
 an inner purification, however, as the beginning 
 and pledge of a happy immortal life. This cul- 
 ture it was the design of the Eleusinian mysteries 
 to provide. "Blessed is he," says Pindar, "who 
 having seen these rites goeth under the earth." 
 "Thrice happy they among mortals," exclaims 
 Sophocles, "who depart into Hades after having 
 seen these rites. Yea, for them alone is there a 
 life; for all other men there is ill." "He who 
 arrives there after initiation and purification," 
 declares Plato, "will dwell with the gods." 
 
 [265] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 But it remained for Christianity, by tran- 
 scending, largely under Greek influences, the low 
 and obscure conceptions of the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures as to the personal life after death, and by 
 faithfully espousing and developing, under the 
 influences of reflection and practice, the teachings 
 and spiritual influences of Jesus and his Apostles 
 and followers through the succeeding centuries, 
 to open the door of faith and hope to humanity 
 at large concerning the goal of the personal life; 
 and thus to suggest and make reasonable a solu- 
 tion of the mystery of personality. The ideal 
 of personal life, which is not only proposed but 
 made possible by the processes of divine redemp- 
 tion for every individual, is progress in sonship; 
 it is the successful struggle toward a union with 
 God which constitutes a perfect condition of 
 sonship. For all those who will have faith, and 
 who bear the fruit of faith in conduct, the "true 
 life," the "eternal life," "the life in God," is a hope, 
 not only made reasonable but also made secure. 
 
 The goal of community personal life as set 
 before the race is neither so manageable for ar- 
 gumentation from the scientific point of view, 
 nor so clearly picturable for religious faith and 
 hope, as is the goal of the personal life of the 
 individual. Under the influence of the rapid de- 
 velopment of the physical sciences, and the 
 greatly increased control which they give over 
 the earth's material resources, a too shallow and 
 unthinking optimism has of late possessed the 
 
 [266] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 mind of the most highly civilized peoples, as to 
 the future of the race. The realization of a con- 
 dition in which there should be no poverty, or 
 at least no need for poverty; in which the mutual- 
 ity of commercial interests should have done 
 away with war, and universal popular education 
 should have made the populace more intelligent, 
 and therefore of necessity more moral; such a 
 future was declaimed as well within the sight of 
 all prophetic souls. To look askance upon, or 
 to question closely the grounds of, this easy- 
 going optimism was to be a pessimist; and to 
 be a bit of a pessimist was to be in disgrace. Of 
 course, the world was growing vastly better; 
 and what need to inquire what a better world 
 really is.f* Of course, life was more than ever 
 worth the living; but why should one inquire in 
 what the values of life chiefly consist.'' To get 
 the most out of the present life, — let alone one's 
 belief about immortality, — was plainly becom- 
 ing more and more the motto to live by, for all 
 orders of the people; and not least, among the 
 most Christian nations so-called. 
 
 This optimism has suffered a rude and cruel 
 shock by the world-involving events of the last 
 few years. The shock, with its complete dem- 
 onstration of the unrealizable character of the 
 then reigning ideal of man's social future, has 
 produced in not a few minds an insanity of an- 
 other type. They who have clung to the old 
 estimates of the values of personal life, for the 
 
 [267] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 individual and for the race, have fallen into the 
 madness of malignity or despair. But there is 
 hovering in the air above, if it is not yet planted 
 and rooted in the hearts of the multitude, an 
 ideal, which, though newly fashioned in some 
 of its details, is still, in its essential features, as 
 old as the vision of the best few, the men who 
 of old had insight into the realities of personal 
 life. The picture is forming of another and more 
 valuable goal to be reached in the future, how- 
 ever far away, of the human race. 
 
 Of this ideal future, which is to sum up the 
 lasting values of personal existence, and personal 
 development, and personal destiny, in the large, 
 the chief conditions are not given by the so-called 
 sciences of economics and sociology, but by ethics 
 and religion. Some of its lessons are being 
 stamped in hard upon the puzzled brain and 
 bitterly agonized heart of humanity. It is right- 
 eousness and not great increase in riches that 
 exalteth a nation. The great adventure is not 
 necesssarily the great disaster. Real right is 
 superior to clamor for fancied rights. The Dec- 
 alogue is not altogether abrogated; but for its 
 better keeping and enforcement it needs the 
 spirit within rather than the considerations of a 
 utilitarian and selfish policy. The most poig- 
 nant grief is not povery. And it is nobler to be 
 empty-handed than to have both hands over- 
 flowing with what belongs of right to one's fel- 
 lows. For welfare's sake, in church and state, 
 
 [268] 
 
THE GOAL OF PERSONAL LIFE 
 
 there is little to choose between an immoral and 
 irreligious democracy and an immoral and hypo- 
 critical autocracy. 
 
 Only the learning of these lessons, and the put- 
 ting of them into practice, by the race, will secure 
 for the race any permanent progress toward its 
 ideal future. 
 
 If now, however, we call upon our reason, 
 whether taking the form of avowed knowledge 
 or of imagination that can claim the right to 
 support faith and hope, for a definite picture of 
 what this ideal future is destined to be, our call 
 must end in disappointment. As has already 
 been briefly indicated, the problem, as connected 
 with the continuance of the present cosmic system 
 in substantially its present form, is unsolved, 
 and seemingly unsolvable by either science, re- 
 ligion, or speculative philosophy. This is true, 
 even if we grant that the physical conditions 
 will admit of an indefinite advancement of hu- 
 manity toward the realization of its economical 
 and social ideals. The social ideal which this 
 most hopeful view of the future of the race will 
 realize has, indeed, been imagined in many differ- 
 ent forms, all the way down from Plato's "Re- 
 public" to the most recent and wild of socialistic 
 dreams. 
 
 Religion, however, presents this ultimate goal 
 of social progress under the conception of a so- 
 called "Kingdom of Heaven," or "Kingdom of 
 God." It is a "new heaven and a new earth," 
 
 [269] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 a "holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven 
 from God." But the moment we pass beyond 
 the ideas that inevitably attach themselves to 
 a "social aggregate" of those that have realized 
 the highest values of the personal life in the im- 
 mortal life, we become involved in figures of 
 speech, the translation of which into terms of 
 reality lies beyond our powers. The one thing 
 certain is this: that if the individual may attain 
 the goal of personal life in immortality, this life 
 cannot be led by the individual alone. The 
 goal for the race composed of individuals, that 
 have within their grasp the gift of immortality, 
 must be conceived of as a Social Ideal. But 
 when, and where, and precisely how, — these are 
 questions the answers to which lie still in the 
 lap of God. It is their answer which will fully 
 reveal the secret of personality as it is wrapped up 
 in the future of the race. 
 
 [270] 
 
CHAPTER Xn 
 
 FAITH AS AN HYPOTHESIS 
 
 /■■■][■■ ^HE value of hypotheses in the solution of 
 all problems of the positive sciences and 
 of the practical life is beyond doubt. In 
 the positive sciences, however, the curious mind, 
 with its due "respect for reality," is never quite 
 satisfied to remaia at rest. It considers that 
 fidelity to its own nature requires the unceasing 
 endeavor to raise the hypothesis to the stand- 
 ard of a so-called law. It craves a formula that 
 shall take its place among the stores of knowledge 
 which the intellect of man has wrung from a 
 Universe that sells its secrets only at the price 
 of patient and persistent toil. Even in the 
 course which leads to such knowledge of the ordi- 
 nary processes of nature and the mariner of forces 
 at work in them, as has to do with the most com- 
 mon goods of the physical life, the motto holds no 
 less true: "There is no royal (or easy) road to 
 learning." 
 
 Of those hypotheses, whether thought of as 
 scientific or practical — since there is no fixed 
 line to be drawn between the two classes — which 
 have to do with material things, their natures, 
 their ways of behavior, and their possible uses, 
 
 [271] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 the favorite method of improving the standing 
 in the estimate of human reason, is the so-called 
 "experimental." Broadly imderstood, this means 
 putting the hypothesis to a series of testings with 
 a view to discover whether it works in particular 
 cases. To attain the highest results in the way 
 of proof, the experiments must be imder a control 
 as exact as possible, must have their results stat- 
 able in terms approaching the mathematical, and 
 must serve the purposes of more or less accurate 
 prediction. 
 
 But even in the positive sciences, including 
 those which deal with the most obvious and 
 ratable phenomena, such as astronomy, physics, 
 and chemistry, the best result obtainable is rarely, 
 or never, anything more than a highly probable 
 degree of an hypothesis. The more subtile and 
 complicated the facts of experience become, the 
 more difficult it is to raise any hypothesis to 
 the rank of assured knowledge. The modern 
 discoveries as to the mystery of the constitution 
 of matter, both in its minutest forms and 
 atomic or molecular activities, and also in the 
 building of worlds and systems of worlds, have 
 not yet led to knowledge, but only to the multi- 
 plication of hypotheses. When it comes to the 
 science of living organisms, whether it be the 
 life of the individual, or the life of any particular 
 species, or the appearance of all life upon this 
 planet and the evolution from one another, or 
 from some common source, of all the species, the 
 
 [272] 
 
FAITH AS AN HYPOTHESIS 
 
 failure of all the most skilfully devised and 
 curiously combined hypotheses, has become so 
 conspicuous that biologists are turning, not in 
 utter despair but with a pretty complete self- 
 distrust, to a reexamination of the facts. 
 
 In matters of utmost concern to personal life, 
 our attitudes toward it, our conduct in personal 
 relations, and our views as to its nature, its de- 
 velopment, and its destiny, it does not exaggerate 
 the truth to say that we live daily, and die at the 
 end, trusting only to more or less probably hy- 
 potheses. The propositions on which we base the 
 conduct of the personal life are, for the most part 
 if not exclusively, conditional propositions. In 
 oiu" use of the most useful things, this is in large 
 measure true. The physician says to himself: 
 "7/ 1 have diagnosed this case correctly, and if the 
 drug I prescribe has in this case its normal effect, 
 I shall probably (or perhaps !) do the patient some 
 good." Men and women marry, beget children, 
 form friendships, enter into business and other 
 contracts, and shape their practical, moral, and 
 religious habits and associations, no matter how 
 firmly convinced they^may be of their own assured 
 wisdom, no matter how profound and immov- 
 able their convictions, building only on probable 
 grounds. We all live and die, as the disciples of 
 correct, or the dupes of false, hypotheses. 
 
 Of all the mysteries which man's reason has 
 to encounter, the nearest, the most important, 
 and surely not the least complicated, is the mys- 
 
 [273] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 tery of his own Self, the mystery of personality. 
 But the solution of this mystery, if solution there 
 be, must be found somewhere in the depths of per- 
 sonal life. We have thought to find it in the form 
 of a religious belief that opens before the mind 
 and heart the hope of an immortality which gives 
 a chance for the realization, progressively, of the 
 personal ideal. But this has been put in the form 
 of an hypothesis. If the values of personaHty may 
 be fully realized in an eternal personal life, whose 
 excellence consists in union with God, then the 
 secret of personality may be said to be disclosed 
 to faith, though in hypothetical form. 
 
 Let us now briefly review the steps which have 
 brought us to our conclusion. On raising the 
 question, "What is it to be a person.''" we were 
 not long in discovering that only a part of its 
 answer could be given by an appeal to experi- 
 mental and descriptive psychology, or by the 
 history of opinion in the race. Physiology and 
 biology tell us ia part, what it is to be a body; 
 psychology, in a measure, what it is to be a soul; 
 common-sense and psycho-physics and physio- 
 logical psychology, not a little, what it is to be a 
 person as being both body and soul. But we 
 soon passed into the presence of problems that 
 derive little help from the positive sciences. 
 In man's rationality and freedom of will we dis- 
 covered potentialities, and lengths and depths of 
 development, for which no strict analogy was to 
 be found either in things or in the most intelli- 
 
 [274] 
 
FAITH AS AN HYPOTHESIS 
 
 gent of the animals. Some of this development 
 was present in all normal persons; marvels of it, 
 significant of a godlike nature, in certain favored 
 individuals of the race. It was, however, only 
 when we came to analyze the nature of the Person 
 as Moral and the Person as Religious that the 
 two-fold nature of man broke into the "light of 
 common day." That tragic strife, that ceaseless 
 struggle between good and evil, of which the 
 whole Universe gives token to art as well as to 
 morals and religion, seemed deeply and irre- 
 movably bedded in the personal life. For the 
 individual, the world of time and sense, to which 
 he undoubtedly belongs, could give promise only 
 of brief existence, and of the inevitable destiny 
 of decay and death. But the faiths and hopes of 
 morality and religion, where they unite in the 
 conception of God as perfect Ethical Spirit, and 
 man's Father and Redeemer, held up the fair 
 vision of another destiny. As to a being having 
 this higher nature and belonging to this invis- 
 ible, but no less real, spiritual world, the relig- 
 ious belief offers itself as solving the secret of 
 personality in the form of an hypothesis. If the 
 personal life ends its aspirations and its struggles 
 in defeat and death, then its mystery is not light- 
 ened, its secret is as dark and deep as ever. But 
 if an immortality which shall more and more per- 
 fectly realize its higher values may be its destiny, 
 then. Who will say that its mystery is no lighter, 
 its secret not less deeply and darkly hidden.'* 
 
 [275] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 As with every other hypothesis, so with the 
 comforting and illumining faith in immortality 
 which religion offers, attempts are unceasingly 
 made to test it more thoroughly as an hypoth- 
 esis, or even to establish it as a matter-of-fact 
 knowledge. Never before were the arguments 
 fTO and con the doctrine of immortality con- 
 sidered from so many sides, or in the light of so 
 much fairly well assured knowledge as to the 
 nature of the Universe and the nature of the body 
 and spirit of man. But we have not before us 
 now the formidable task of passing the argu- 
 ments in review, and of drawing conclusions 
 from them. Not a few have proceeded to the 
 effort of testing the hypothesis in more modern 
 and scientific ways than those of ancient witch- 
 craft and necromancy, and there are some who 
 firmly believe the testing to be successful. The- 
 oretically, however, the faith of immortality 
 depends upon the conception we form, and adopt 
 to guide the will, of the Universe as clearly mani- 
 festing the immanence of rational mind and per- 
 fect ethical spirit, contending with the race, and 
 in and through the race, to realize in the personal 
 lives of men the divine ideal of personality. We 
 will only notice the incontestable fact of experi- 
 ence that those who attain in the highest degree 
 the faith of immortality not infrequently acquire 
 with it a kind and degree of spiritual insight 
 which takes them deep into the mind and heart 
 of Reality. But we will for the present let our 
 
 [276] 
 
FAITH AS AN HYPOTHESIS 
 
 attempt at disclosing the secret of personality 
 stand as an hypothesis. If it is not to the intel- 
 lect a truth demonstrable by scientific methods, 
 it is to religious faith an imshakable hope.' 
 
 Nor is this faith as a triumphant conviction, 
 and its hope as a steadfast assurance of reality, 
 confined to the high and mighty in intellectual 
 attainment, or to the select few of saints and 
 philosophers, among the multitudes of men. It 
 is adapted and designed for all the restless, 
 weary, struggling and sinning sons and daugh- 
 ters of the race. And for them all, it may be 
 made a matter of immediate and intimate 
 experience, and subjected in its way to an 
 experimental testing. The very condition of 
 restlessness, weariness, struggling and sinning, 
 sharpens the desire for it, and increases the 
 intensity of its need. And beyond all ques- 
 tion, this condition was never in its extremity 
 more obvious and bitter and unbearable than 
 at the present hour. 
 
 The faith of religion touching the future of 
 the race extends the hypothesis so as to found 
 and cherish the hope of a blessed community 
 which, in its constitution and conduct, shall real- 
 ize all the supreme values of the personal life. 
 Its social ideal is a Divine Kingdom altogether 
 composed of the immortals, the faithful sons of 
 
 ' For a detailed discussion of the problem of " Personal Immoi^ 
 tality" see the author's "Philosophy of Religion," Vol. II, pp. 
 479-649; and "What May I Hope," Chap. VII. 
 
 [277] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 God. The salvation of the race is the assump- 
 tion, at the end of which the secret of personality 
 stands revealed and justified in its collective form. 
 If this Kingdom is finally established, then the 
 long and weary and suffering way of bitter strug- 
 gle and seemingly appalling loss is explained as 
 best it can be to finite minds. 
 
 The conception of a Kingdom of God estab- 
 lished over the race of men is the grandest and 
 most inspiring of all human conceptions. Through 
 the centuries it has motived and made the most 
 truly great heroes and martyrs among all classes 
 of men. To give it form and shape has excited 
 the wildest fancies and the loftiest flights of poetic 
 and pictorial imagination; but it has also been 
 productive of no little of subtile argumentation, 
 vain disputings, as well as soberer reasoning. No 
 details of a sensuous and temporal sort have been 
 established as items of matter-of-fact knowledge. 
 This is not strange, however, considering the 
 other-worldliness of the conception itself. A 
 Divine Kingdom remains the vague but entranc- 
 ing and effective form of religion's Social Ideal. 
 
 The improved economic and political future of 
 the race, which is to continue perpetuating its 
 individuals indefinitely, imder essentially the 
 the same conditions of time and sense, is the 
 current form of a social ideal that rivals, and in 
 some respects resembles, that of religious faith. 
 Of late, it has been more definitely shaped than 
 ever before by the rise of the democracy. The 
 
 [278] 
 
FAITH AS AN HYPOTHESIS 
 
 world over, the rise of the democracy is the 
 most astonishing and incalculable phenomenon 
 of the centuries. It is both reason and result of 
 the great European war. It is stirring the tor- 
 pid millions of India and China. It has pene- 
 trated the wUds of Africa, the steppes of Asia, 
 and the remotest islands of the South Seas. It 
 has revolutionized Russia. It is threatening 
 German and Austrian and even Turkish autoc- 
 racy. It is agitating Great Britain, Japan, and 
 our own country. It is just beginning to mar- 
 shal its tremendous forces and to advance its 
 more preposterous as well as its more consistent 
 and reasonable ideas. Without doubt, the close 
 of the present century will witness a world of men 
 greatly changed under the influences of this form 
 of the Social Ideal. This undoubted fact ren- 
 ders the ideal itseM, to all thoughtful students of 
 human nature and himian history, an object both 
 of apprehension and of hope. 
 
 But what, in the face of all these threatened 
 changes to the futiu-e of the race, whether dis- 
 trusted and feared or admired and hoped for, 
 stands firm to the end, however long deferred? 
 It is reasoned convictions as to the nature, ob- 
 ligations, opportunities, essential values, and 
 destiny of the personal life. For the social ideal 
 of the democratic faith and hope is itseK only 
 an hypothesis. And as an hypothesis, its final 
 testing will depend upon the service it actually 
 renders in securing the unchanging supreme 
 
 [279] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 values of the personal life. Only in securing 
 these can it throw any clear light upon the secret 
 of personality. 
 
 If, however, this democracy disregards, in the 
 person of its leaders and of its servile or revolt- 
 ing membership, the warning of the past, breaks 
 loose from the control of moral and religious 
 ideals, and assumes sway in the interests of 
 more multitudinous arrogance, greed, and self- 
 ish ambition, then the late state of the world's 
 true welfare will be even worse than it has ever 
 been hitherto. The values of personal life, and 
 personal development, and personal destiny 
 being our chief consideration, we desire to make 
 the " world safe for democracy," only on the 
 condition that it shall be a kind of democracy 
 which makes the world the safer for the practi- 
 cal solution of the secret of personality in the 
 form of the progressive realization for all man- 
 kind, of personality's moral and religious ideals. 
 
 In closing our discussion, we should like to take 
 that more inclusive view which is open only 
 — and then but partially — to the reflective 
 thinking of philosophy. The spirit of this think- 
 ing is constructive, irenic, conciliatory. 
 
 "Science, philosophy, and religion, all have 
 their own peculiar theories of Reality, their own 
 proper conceptions of the Being of the World. 
 To science, the sum-total of experienced reali- 
 ties seems best conceived of as an orderly, law- 
 abiding, self-evolving, mechanical system. To 
 
 [280] 
 
FAITH AS AN HYPOTHESIS 
 
 philosophy, with its profounder insights and 
 more far-reaching critical analysis, this same 
 totality appears as the expression of a Unitary 
 Being, that is absolute Will, functioning teleo- 
 logically as omnipresent, immanent Idea. But 
 rehgion conceives of the ground of its experience 
 in a way to satisfy more immediately and per- 
 fectly sesthetical and ethical cravings, and cer- 
 tain demands for support to the exigencies of 
 the practical life. As its thought becomes more 
 comprehensive and deeply reflective, it frames 
 the conception of God, as perfect Ethical Spirit, 
 the Object of faith, of worship, and of service." 
 "The World, however, is One, and man is one. 
 Therefore the steady pressure of the demands 
 for some theory of reality that shall take fuller 
 accoxmt of the diflFerent aspects of this cosmological 
 Unity, and that shall appeal to the total experi- 
 ence, in a harmonizing way, of this psychological 
 and anthropological unity, can never be long re- 
 sisted. Science and religion, and philosophy and 
 religion, cannot long refuse to take account of 
 each other's truths. They are all aiming at the 
 one truth; and this one truth must base itself 
 upon, and be understood in the light of, the 
 totality of human experience. Inasmuch, how- 
 ever, as only a prolonged study of history and 
 psychology can tell us what the so-called re- 
 ligious experience really is, and inasmuch as only 
 the critical, reflective, and speculatively con- 
 structive method of thought can fruitfully avail 
 
 [281] 
 
THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY 
 
 itself of the data furnished by this study, the 
 Philosophy of Religion is the only arbiter and 
 reconciler of all strife in this domain. But the 
 very data are never all given; the exploration of 
 those which belong to the past is scarcely as yet 
 more than well begun. Moreover, the powers and 
 achievements of reflective thought are taxed to 
 their utmost, and very speedily transcended, 
 when employed upon the profounder problems 
 and larger thoughts of the religious life and devel- 
 opment of humanity. Religion itself is an ever- 
 developing experience. Its Object of faith is 
 essentially an ever-expanding Ideal-Real. There- 
 fore any attempt to teach the truths of the re- 
 ligious experience of humanity by the method 
 of philosophy can only terminate in a still im- 
 perfect condition of knowledge, although in an 
 improved condition of rational faith." ^ By such 
 a faith, therefore, we test the secret of Personal- 
 ity, while we live and die in the hopes that are 
 the choice possession of the religious nature of 
 man. 
 
 1 Quoted from the closing pages of author's "Philosophy of 
 ReUgion," U. pp. 570-571. 
 
 [282] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aeschtltjs, his conception of 
 Zeus, 236 
 
 Ahuka-Mazda, Bundehesh idea 
 of, 236 f. 
 
 Ancestor, worship of, 7 f., 
 203 f., 216 f. 
 
 Anthbopologt, its study of 
 man, 17 f., 274 f.; on savage 
 and primitive man, 85 f., 
 86 (note) 
 
 Aristotle, on falsehood, 127; 
 on choice, 161 f.; on general 
 justice, 172 
 
 Assimilation, nature of the 
 mental, 43 f.; place of atten- 
 tion in, 44 f.; "fusion" of 
 ideas produced, 44 f., 56 t. 
 
 Atman, Hindu conception of, 
 237 f. 
 
 Aug0stinb, experiences of, 63 f ., 
 256 
 
 Babism, mixed nature of, 208 
 Bagehot, on formation of habits, 
 
 51 
 Beauty, objectivity of, 186 f.; 
 
 qualifications of, 187 f. 
 Body, meaning of term as 
 
 applied to persons, 20 f., 23, 
 
 69 f.; legal use of, 22 f.; 
 
 significance of, to personal life, 
 
 69 f., 77 f. 
 Book of the Dead, its doctrine 
 
 of salvation, 265 
 Bosanquet, remark on Plotinus, 
 
 192 
 Bownb, definition of "merit," 
 
 153 f. 
 
 Brahma, Hindu conception of, 
 
 192 
 Brahma Baiharta Purana, on 
 
 divine knowledge, 256 
 Browning (quoted), 19, 157 
 Buddhism, its nature worship, 
 
 203; in Thibet, 208; univer- 
 
 saUty of, 212 f. 
 
 Categories, nature of, 12 f., 
 132 f.; as applied to concrete 
 realities, 129 f.; problem of, 
 with Kant, 132 f.; Oriental 
 view of, 132 f.; scholastic 
 theories of, 134 f.; the moral, 
 165 
 
 Causation, conception of, 137, 
 140 f., 157 f.; as misapplied 
 by physical science, 141 f., 
 157 f. 
 
 Choice, nature of, in a person, 
 161 f., 163 f. 
 
 Coleridge, on use of word 
 "reason," 146 
 
 Cobban, nature of, 15 
 
 Dalgai&n, his criticism of Mr. 
 
 Spencer, 227 
 De Ghoot, on Chinese doctrine 
 
 of the soul, 203 
 Determinism, as misappUed to 
 
 a person, 140 f., 143 f., 155 f. 
 Dryden (quoted), 23 
 
 Epictetus, on development of 
 body, 71 f.; on love of beauty, 
 179 f.; on the vice of com- 
 plaining, 240 
 
 [283] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Feah, human emotion of, 2 f . 
 
 FiiOURNOY, M., on phenome- 
 nalism, 123 
 
 Force, conception of, 137 f. 
 
 Foster, Db. M., on automatic 
 vohtion, 69 f. 
 
 Haeckel, his materialism, 239 
 Herbart, his doctrine of ideas, 
 
 62 f. 
 Hinduism, nature of, 8, 204; 
 
 its doctrine of Maya, 133; 
 
 elements of Animism in, 
 
 204; conception of Atman, 
 
 237 
 HSffding, on moral freedom, 
 
 166 
 Hopkins, Prop., on conception 
 
 of Nirvana, 263 f . 
 
 Infinite, The, conception of, 
 230 
 
 James, Prop., on the Herbartian 
 psychology, 52 f.; on self- 
 consciousness, 108 
 
 Jastrow, Morris, Je. {quoted), 
 9; on universality of religion, 
 206 
 
 Kant, Immantjel, on nature of 
 the categories, 132 f.; on na- 
 ture of person, 261 f. 
 
 IiACTANTitis, his definition of 
 religion, 200 
 
 Law, a personal conception, 
 227 f. 
 
 Leib, meaning of word, 21 
 
 Lotze, on bodily feelings, 76 f.; 
 on self -consciousness, 113 f.; 
 on benevolence as universal 
 virtue, 173 
 
 Lubbock, Sib John, on non- 
 religious tribes, 206 f. 
 
 [284] 
 
 Marriage, ceremonial nature of, 
 6 f.; myths concerning, 7 
 
 Martin, Dr., on Confucius, 66; 
 on religions of China, 208 
 
 Maxims oj Ani, on conditions 
 of salvation, 264 f. 
 
 Maya, Hindu doctrine of, 133 
 
 Memory, nature of the personal, 
 66 t. 
 
 Meredith (quoted), 28 
 
 Metaphysics, necessity of, 33 f., 
 120 f.; schools of, 122 f.; 
 as affecting man's rehgious 
 nature, 197 f. 
 
 MtJLLEH, Joannes, on the per- 
 sonal will, 68 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, on theo- 
 logical use of word "person," 
 31 
 
 Nirvana, conception of, 263 f. 
 
 Osmis, patron of agriculture, 9 
 "Ought," feeling of the, 148 f. 
 
 Pantheism, its ideal of personal 
 life, 191 f. 
 
 Parmenides, his conception of 
 nature, 239 
 
 Paulhan, M., on nature of will, 
 162 
 
 Person, his appetites, 1 f., 4 f., 
 9 f., 18; difference from lower 
 animals, 1 f., 6 f., 11 f., 12, 
 14 f., 18, 45 f., 71 f., 91 f., 
 179 f.; origin of, 7 f.; rela- 
 tions of, to the gods, 9 f., 16 f., 
 215 f.; character of his knowl- 
 edge, 11 f., 13, 46 f., 52 t., 
 92 f., 100 f., 105 t., 201 f.; 
 intuitions of, 12 f.; artistic 
 nature of, 16 f., 155 f.. Chap. 
 Vni; as having a body, 20 f ., 
 34, 66 f., 179 f.; and a soul, 
 21 f., 25, 26, 34; as a Self, 
 
INDEX 
 
 27 f.; derivation of word, 29; 
 Old English use of, M {.; 
 theological use of, 31 f.; two- 
 fold nature of, 34 f., 252 f., 
 260 f.; as reflective, 39 t., 
 64 f., 56 f., 100 f., 112 f., 116, 
 120 f.; identity, or self -same- 
 ness of, 40 f.; as voluntary, 
 59 f., 140 f., 143 f.; social 
 influences on, 81 f., 83 f., 96 f.; 
 coordination of faculties in 
 development of, 90 f.; self- 
 consciousness of, 106 f ., 110 f., 
 112 f.; as rational, Chap. VI, 
 118 f., 122 f., 125 f., 134 f., 
 136, 137 f., 145 t., 201 f.; and 
 metaphysical, 120 f., 124 f.; 
 as moral. Chap. VII, 146 f., 
 148 f., 153 f., 165 f.; as free, 
 155 f., 157 f., 159 f., 161 {., 
 163 f.; as religious. Chap. IX 
 and X, 197 f., 200 f., 204 f., 
 209 f., 213 f., 222 f., 229 f., 
 242 f., 275 f.; the so-called 
 "Absolute," 229 f., 231 I., 
 264 t.; immortality of the, 
 260 f., 262 f., 265 f., 270 f. 
 
 Persona, use of Latin word, 29; 
 Shakespeare's use of, 29 f.; 
 Blackstone's use of, 30 
 
 Personaiitt, Problem of, im- 
 portance of, vii f., 37 t., 195, 
 260 f.. Chap. XII; difficulty 
 of, vii f., 20 f., 195, 252 f., 271 
 t.; rationality of, 12 f., 32 f., 
 36, 100 f., 122 f.; individuaUty 
 of, 36 f., 65 f., 85 f., 90 f., 
 92 f.; the centre of. Chap. 
 Ill, 44 f., 49 f., 57 f.; differ- 
 ence of temperament in, 46 t., 
 48 f.; development of. Chap. 
 V, 91 f., 95 f., 97 f., 106 f., 
 112 f.; the "double," 109 f.; 
 sesthetical nature of, 178 f., 
 180 f., 182 f., 188 f., 193 f.; 
 
 Ideal of, 191 f., 243 {., 260 f., 
 270 f., 275 f.; religious nature 
 of, 205 f., 215 f.; as standard 
 of all values, 226 f., 257 f., 
 265 f., 268 f., 278 f.; the goal, 
 of. Chap. XI, 248 f., 260 f., 
 254 f., 260 f., 268 f. 
 Phenombnausm, fallacy of, 
 
 123 f., 134 f. 
 
 Pindah, on the Eleusinian mys- 
 teries, 265 
 
 PliATO, on varieties of virtue, 171; 
 and the opinions about the 
 gods, 266; on the Eleusinian 
 Mysteries, 265 
 
 Plotintts {quoted), 17, 190 
 
 "Primitive Man," fiction of, 4; 
 characteristics of, 8 f., 13 f.; 
 moral nature of, 14 f . 
 
 Prter, on nature of the child, 
 103 f. 
 
 Psychology, of personal life, 
 2 f., 17, 274 f. 
 
 Qdatrepages, on universality 
 of religion, 206 
 
 Rameseb II, prayer of, 65 
 Reality, man's respect for, 
 
 124 f., 126 f., 131 f., 147 f., 
 234 f.; always concrete, 128 f.; 
 spiritual nature of, 189 f., 
 234 f.; God as Source of, 
 234 f. 
 
 Reasoning, nature of, in man's 
 case, 100 t., 120 f., 134 f. 
 
 Religion, nature of, defined, 
 199 f., 203 f., 215 f.; meaning 
 of word, 200 f.; essential 
 elements of, 200 f., 210 f.; 
 values of, 202 f., 213 f.; primi- 
 tive form of, 203 f., 216 f.; 
 universality of, 206 f., 212 f.; 
 differentiation of, 207 f., 209 f., 
 213 f., 215 f., 218 f.; nature of 
 
 [285] 
 
INDEX 
 
 the Theistic, 210 f., 219 f.; 
 influence of, on civilization, 
 213 f.; its doctrine of salva- 
 tion, 260 f., 266 f. 
 
 Revilo!, on universality of 
 religion, 206 
 
 RicHTER, Jean Paul, his vision 
 of the Ego, 116 f. 
 
 RiEHL, on phenomenalism, 124; 
 on Determinism, 156 
 
 RosKOFF, on universahty of re- 
 Ugion, 206 
 
 SCHLEIEEMACHEB, On SOUTCe of 
 
 religion, 215; on the church, 
 249 
 
 Science, personal nature of, 
 12 f., 126 f.; attitude toward 
 religion, 196 f.; its conception 
 of the Universe, 222 f., 225 f., 
 272 f. 
 
 Self, meaning of word, 27 f.; 
 as equivalent with person, 
 28 f., 40, 62 f., 116 f., 233 f.; 
 development of, 42 f., 142 f.; 
 coming to oneself. Chap. IV, 
 64 f.; as body, 66 f., 71 f., 
 116 f. ; influence of clothing on 
 feeling of, 74 f.; the Self 
 sexual, 79 f.; the Self social, 
 81 f., 84 f.; consciousness of, 
 106 f., 112 f., 116 f.; self- 
 determination of, 142 f.; Ideal 
 of the, 176, 233 f.; conception 
 of the Divine, 233 f. 
 
 Self-Consciousness, function 
 of, 106 f., 110 f., 112 f., 117 f.; 
 theories of, 107 f., 109 f.. 
 Ill I., 117 f.; so-called "im- 
 mediacy" of, 110 f.; natural 
 and reflective, 116 f. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, on nature 
 of conscience, 147 f. 
 
 SiDGWicK, Prof., on "Free 
 Will" controversy, 156 
 
 [286] 
 
 Smith, W. Robertson (quoted), 
 7 
 
 Sophocles, on the Eleusinian 
 mysteries, 265 
 
 Soul, term as applied to a per- 
 son, 21 f., 26; Egyptian doc- 
 trine of, 25; Hebrew views 
 concerning, 26 
 
 Spencer, his use of the word 
 "Unknown," 227 
 
 Stratton, Prof., experiment of, 
 43 
 
 Tabu, nature of, 14 f. 
 
 Taoism, doctrine of, concerning 
 the soul, 25 f. 
 
 Temperament, differences of, in 
 personal life, 46 f . 
 
 Tennyson (quoted), 105 f. 
 
 Tertullian, on use of the word 
 "persona," 31 
 
 Tragedy, meaning of, for per- 
 sonal life, 194 f. 
 
 Virtue, meaning of word, 166 f.; 
 nature of, 166 f.; varieties of, 
 168 f., 170 f.; unity of, 172, 
 173 f.; conflict of, 175 
 
 VOLKMANN VON VoLKMAH, lus 
 
 doctrine of ideas, 52 f . 
 
 Ward, Prof., definition of think- 
 ing, 98 
 
 Will, the personal, as centre 
 of the personal nature. Chap. 
 Ill, 44 f., 49 f., 58 f., 137 f., 
 142 f., 224 f., 232 f.; exercise 
 of, in learning, 45 f., 59 f., 
 103 f., 112 f., 140 f.; m forma- 
 tion of habits, 51 f.; varieties 
 of, 59 f., 142 f., 157 f.; training 
 of, in chUd, 103 f., 140 f.; 
 conceptions arising in, 137 f., 
 139 f., 224 f.. 232 f.; freedom 
 
INDEX 
 
 of, 166 {., 164 f.; nature of an Wundt, Prof., on the will, 58 
 
 act of, 164 f.; conception of 
 
 the Divine, 232 f . Zeus, Aeschylus' conception of, 
 
 WiLiiiAMS, Sm MoNiEH {quoted), 236 
 
 8; on Hinduism, 203 Zulus, belief of, in clairvoyance, 
 
 Wordsworth {qttoted), 170 13 f. 
 
 THE-PLIMPTON'PRESS 
 
 H 0» W ODM A S S-TJ-SA F 287 H 
 
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 WHAT CAN I KNOW? 
 
 An Inquiry into Truth, its Nature, The Means of its Attainment, 
 and its Relations to the Practical Life. By George Trumbull Ladd, 
 LL.D. Crown 8vo., $1.50 net. 
 
 This book, while brining to bear on the problem of knowledge the more recent 
 points of view, both psychological and philosophical, aims chiefly at helping the 
 reader in the culture and practical uses of the mental life. Thus it considers not 
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 used to attain its most important ends. These are the ideals and the behavior that 
 have value. Without being controversial, it furnishes material for criticism of the 
 errors and half-truths of Pragmatism and other current theories as to the meaning 
 and worth of Truth. Its conclusions lie in " the middle of the road," between the 
 extremes of intellectual over-confidence or an easy credulousness and excessive skep. 
 ticism or agnostic despair. Inasmuch as all knowledge involves the higher senti- 
 ments and the activities of " free will," its attainment and culture become a matter 
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 ADd Hope, in further defence of a consistent system of rationalism in opinion and in 
 conduct. 
 
 For such ... as are seeking a satisfying answer to the inquiry propounded by 
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 " I ought " and " I can." The significance^ and value of the intention of being good 
 and of doing one's duty are discussed in separate chapters, which are followed by a 
 brief defence of the supreme worth of moral ideals in the evolution of personal life. 
 A chapter on the many virtues is supplemented by one raising the inquiry; " Is there 
 one only virtue ? " in which the essentials of all the! others may be summed up and 
 expressed. Other laws are then contrasted with the Moral Law, and certain maxims 
 helpful for the settling of cases of conscience are then suggested. The book ends 
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 reached, however, in a chapter which bears the title " Lesser and Greater Beliefs," 
 and which attempts to distinguish those forms of this mental attitude that make 
 claims upon the conscience, put the person under rational obligations, and offer the 
 comfort and rewards of right belief. Chapters then follow which give more special 
 and detailed consideration to certain scientific and social beliefs; and, after describing 
 the minor differences between simple belief and so-called faith, vindicate at con- 
 siderable length the more important and fundamental of the faiths of morality and 
 of religion. 
 
 This admirable treatise strongly emphasizes the need of moral earnestness in the 
 selection of the beliefs that have best stood time's test by human experience. For 
 without this the world of men now crying for a rehabilitation of religious faith will 
 cry in vain. — The Oittlook, N. Y. 
 
 (This) series of books on knowledge, ethics and belief, to be completed by an 
 inquiry into the sources and reasonableness of human hopes is a work of which 
 Americans may be justly proud. . . . Professor Ladd handles sensible questions in a 
 sensible way, and sensible people will thank him for giving them a loaf when they 
 ask for bread — The Sun, N. Y. 
 
 WHAT MAY I HOPE ? 
 
 An Inquiry into the Sources and Reasonableness of Human 
 Hopes, especially the Social and Religious. By George Trumbull 
 Ladd, LL.D. Crown 8vo., $1.50 net. 
 
 This fourth and last of the volumes that attempt to deal with problems of practi- 
 cal philosophy in a manner to help toward a better and more truly successful life, 
 has for its subject the complex emotion of Hope. While admitting that psychologi- 
 cal science encounters especial obstacles in this task, the author gives a more 
 complete analysis of the nature and sources of hoping than will be found elsewhere. 
 He then proceeds to consider the limitations, assurance, and practical uses of hope. 
 A chapter follows concerning hopes scientific, political and social. The books 
 closes with a somewhat lengthy discussion of the hope of moral perfection (or in 
 religious terminology, " the hope of salvation "); the hope of immortality; and the 
 hope of a perfect society, or a " Divine Kingdom." 
 
 The same earnest effort is made — which seems by common consent to have been 
 successful in the preceding volumes — to maintain throughout clearness and sinv 
 plicity of style, and to keep the practical issues always prominently in mind.