028. I. Personality.
I. Personality. The question of personality must be studied first of all and Chiefly in the light of one’s own consciousness. There is no other way to a knowledge of other personalities, whether human or angelic, or even the divine. We have no immediate knowledge of the facts in others which constitute personality. When these facts are known in one’s own consciousness, then the personality of others is revealed to him through a manifestation of the same facts. This is a true mode of knowledge; and the knowledge is validated by the deepest and most determining principle of science. The generalizations and constructions of science would be groundless if things which manifest the same qualities were not the same in fact.
Personality is a unity in the deepest sense of the term. The facts of consciousness are manifold and diverse, but consciousness itself, the very center of personality, is one. Consciousness and memory, but memory as a fact of consciousness, reveal to one’s self his personal identity. The unity of personality is in the truth of personal identity. With the deepest sense of the unity of mind, its faculties are open to analysis and classification. Otherwise there could be no mental science. Personality, while a unity itself, admits of scientific treatment because it consists, not in a single principle or power, but in a complex of powers. Analysis may open this complex and discover its content of powers. This process is necessary to a clear insight into personality itself, and the way to a truer view of the divine personality. The first thing, then, in the opening of this question is to find the necessary facts of personality.
1. Determining Facts of Personality.—There are mighty forces in physical nature; but they can act only on the proper adjustment or collocation of material things, and thereon must necessarily act. Their action is without consciousness or aim as well as under a law of necessity. Such forces, however great in potency or wonderful in operation, can have no quality of personality. Life, Math its marvelous agency in the vegetable kingdom, still makes no advance beyond the purely physical realm toward any intrinsic personal quality. In the animal orders, notably in those of the higher grades, there are instinctive impulses toward ends, and a voluntary power for their attainment, but no evidence of other essential requisites of personality. We cannot study the psychology of animals as we can that of minds like our own, because we cannot place the facts of the former in the light of our own consciousness as we can the facts of the latter. Yet strong instinctive impulses and strong voluntary power are manifest facts in animal life. But there is no evidence of such rational intelligence in the conception of ends and such freedom in the choice of ends as must combine in the constitution of personality.
Pure intellect, intellect without any form of sensibility, however great, could not constitute personality. Conceptually, such an intellect is a possibility, though its sphere of knowledge could not be universal. A deeper analysis must find in the sensibilities a necessary element of knowledge in many spheres. Such a mind might have great intuitive power and a clear insight into the abstract sciences, but it could have no interest in their study. Neither could there be for it any eligibility of ends. For such a mind the mightiest potentiality of will would be useless for the want of all motive or reason of use. The only possible action would be purposeless and purely spontaneous. Personality is intrinsically a free rational agency. This is impossible in pure intellect, however great—impossible even with the complement of a will potentially very strong.
Rational or moral motives are a necessity to personal agency, and therefore to personality. Such motives are not mere instinctive impulses toward action, but forms of conscious interest in ends of action, which may be taken up into reflection and judgment. Motives are possible only with a capacity for conscious interest in ends. This capacity is broader and deeper than can well be expressed by the term sensibility. The profounder motives arise from the rational and moral nature rather than from what we usually designate as the feelings. There can be for us no eligibility of ends, and therefore no rational choice, except through motives arising in some form of conscious interest in ends. But rational choice is the central fact of rational agency, and the only difference between rational agency and personal agency is a difference of verbal expression. With the power of personal agency there is personality. It follows that for the constitution of personality an emotional nature, with a capacity for rational interest in ends, must combine with rational intelligence. Will is the central power of personal agency, and therefore a necessary constituent of personality. Without the will there could be no voluntary use or direction of the mental faculties, no voluntary action of any kind. In such a state man would be as incapable of personal agency as an animal or even as any force of physical nature. The result of the previous analysis is that rational intelligence, sensibility, and will are essential requisites of personality. But such a complex of faculties does not in itself complete the idea of personality. There must also be the freedom of personal agency. Such agency means, not merely the freedom of external action, but specially the free rational choice of the ends of action. The freedom of external action requires simply the freedom of the bodily organism from interior impotence and exterior restraint, and may be as complete in an animal as in a man. The bodily organism is merely instrumental to the external action, and can be free only as a freely usable instrument. The mere freedom of external action can have no higher sense. The true freedom must lie back of this in the personal agency, and must consist in the power of free rational choice. With this there is true personality.
There is still a profound question which vitally concerns the realty of personality. It is the question of the relation of motive to choice, or, more properly here, the decision of the mind with respect to an end—more properly, because whether such decision be a choice or not depends upon the relation of the motive to the mental action. That motive is a necessary condition of choice is a plain truth—so plain that the maintenance of a liberty of indifference may well seem strange. Any voluntary decision in a state of indifference must be a purely arbitrary volition, and therefore cannot be a choice.[213] Choice in the very nature of it is the rational election of an end. For its rationality there must be a motive. But what is the action of the motive upon the elective decision ? This is the question which vitally concerns the reality of personality. If the motive is simply a solicitation or inducement which may be taken up into reflection and weighed in the judgment, personality is secure. But if the motive is a causal efficience which determines the decision to the end, then there is no choice, nor the possibility of one, and personality sinks with personal agency beneath an absolute law of determinism.
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Only as rational intelligence, sensibility, and will combine in the constitution of free personal agency is there the reality of personality. There must be rational intelligence for the conception of ends, sensibility as the source of motives with respect to ends, and will in combination with intelligence and sensibility as the complement of power in choosing between ends. With these facts there is personality. Our own personality is in this complex of powers. With moral reason and a capacity for moral motives, motives sufficient for the choice of the good against the evil, there is a moral personality. Conceptually, there might be a rational personality without the necessary powers of a moral personality. These powers might be an original omission, or the rational might remain after the moral were sunken beneath a law of necessitation. Moral personality must sink under a moral necessity to evil, just as rational personality must sink in the want of its essential requisites. There is no deeper moral necessity, none more exclusive of moral personality, than an incapacity for the motives necessary to the choice of the good. For complete moral personality there must be free moral agency.
2. Requisites of All Personality.—There can be neither human nor angelic personality, nor even a divine personality, without this complex of essential requisites. There is no need and no purpose of asserting a complete parallelism in all personalities. There is no such implication. As we ascend through the orders of higher intelligences, angels and archangels, even up to God himself, there may be, and in the divine must be, large variations from such a parallelism. The variations may be not only in the grade of faculties, reaching to the infinite in the divine, and particularly in the forms of sensibility, but there may be other powers, now wholly unknown to us. The position is that the complex of requisites in our own personality is a necessity for all personality. Neither angel nor archangel is or can be a person in the true, deep sense of the term without these powers, whatever their grade in such higher intelligences, whatever variation in the forms of sensibility, or whatever other powers they may possess. The same law of requisites must hold for the divine personality. But this application must be treated under a distinct heading.