PERSONALITY. What is new in the philosophical treat ment of Personality is the recognition of its supreme place in the interpretation of value. To meet the modern form of the ancient subjective explanations of "good" ("Man is the measure of all things," including good and evil), or the modern theory that the only account to be given of good or value, is that it is what is desired, a new form of idealism arises; viz., personal idealism. If "There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so," what is the nerve or soul of the thinking which penetrates into the essence of life, giving it a character of value or disvalue? The philosophy of personality conceives value as correlative to person, person being something unique in every human being, which he brings with him to experience, and which urges him in all activi ties to seek value.
In earlier modern discussions, the question of knowledge was chiefly investigated. MacTaggart for instance, in his article in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, examines the problem whether the self, which he regards as equivalent to Personality, can be known as an object. He concludes that the self can per ceive itself as an object of awareness. He holds also that self consciousness is not essential to selfhood. With this James Ward (Realm of Ends) would clearly agree. For his Pan-psychism or doctrine that the nature of things consists, as in Leibniz's Mo nadism, of psychical units, rather mental than physical in kind, supposes even the unconscious monads, or psychic atoms of nature to be "conative, that is feeling and striving subjects, or persons, in the widest sense." This wide use of the term person is inad missible, since it is required for a principle which is indispensable for the understanding of human experience in its most individual character. Ward admits the difficulty of conceiving a psychic being without memory. And without a realization of the part played by memory, actively bringing to the events of life the results of all experience of value, it seems impossible to under stand the essence of personality, in its incommunicable character. Here Leibniz's theory that the world for each individual is "per spective" or known only from his unique point of view, in its fur ther elaboration by modern thinkers, falls in with the new insight in regard to the creation by the individual mind of all the mean ing through which his world is real for him. In Prof. Wildon Carr's Theory of Monads the perspective view of knowledge is carried farthest, and the monad appears to do almost all the work of creating its own world.
Some thinkers explain the significance of personality, by giving it the highest place in a philosophy of "emergence," according to which there is a hierarchy of orders, or stages of evolution in the universe, gradually following upon one another. Thus Gen. Smuts (Holism and Evolution) conceives Personality as the culmination of a series, and, whilst holding with Bergson that all evolution is "creative," finds in the personality of every human being a "unique creative novelty." Dr. William Brown's view (Mind and Personality) that consciousness is creative is based on psychology, especially psycho-analysis, whilst his philosophical standpoint is in harmony with this result. "So far as the mind is a conscious mind," it is always producing something new. The individual has produced in himself a "final differentiation," and "superimposed it on all he has inherited." Such an interpretation seems con firmed, when we turn from the subtle and microscopic analyses of the individual consciousness, and sub-consciousness in which lies the genius of modern psychology, to the large-scale impres sions of human nature presented in biography, history and litera ture. Thucydides' dictum that human nature will remain the
same, gives one side of the truth, but the original individuality of each person's struggle to realize his own idea of good, even though it may take a poor form, is the more impressive side. This becomes more intelligible if we conceive the distinctive character of personal mind, as that which cannot survive, but will disappear in sinking to a lower level, unless it finds some mini mum of worth in its experience. The conception that value is correlative to personality is presented impressively by Dr. Max Scheler ("Formalismus"—"Formalism in Ethics, and a Material Ethic of Value"). Personality he conceives as a new type of being, emerging in humanity, at some stage of its development, together with a new type of values and acts. The philosophy of "Personalism" in its American form emphasizes the creativity of the person in the spheres of knowledge and of value. Borden P. Bowne ("Personalism, Common-Sense and Philosophy") insists on the necessity for the understanding of knowledge, of recognizing that "we are in a personal world from the start." The greatest problem which arises for this type of philosophy, is whether that principle which is found to be essential to the interpretation not of knowledge alone, but of human activity in all its reality and meaning, can be attributed to the whole of things. Is the Universe personal? That it is, is the conviction of Professor Clement Webb, who argues (God and Personality) that "The thought of the Universe as a whole," primarily presents itself as a religious thought, and for the religious emotion, our relation to the universe must be conceived as "essentially of the same nature as our relation to a person." Similarly Bowne (Theism) in view of the fact of the incompleteness of personality in our experiences, finds it necessary to posit a complete personality, which he identifies with the Infinite. And Professor Flewellyn (Creative Personality) assumes that the source of personality must be the "Absolute Personality" which is the Whole. Mac Taggart's arguments, in the article cited above seem conclusive against the logical validity of this conception. It may be added that the notion that the Whole, within which all spiritual life falls, can be personal, is inconsistent with the idea of personality in the deepest sense. For this involves distinction and relations between persons, possessing each at least some degree of an inde pendent quality to constitute him a term or subject of a spiritual relation. The mystical loss of personality in communion with the Supreme Being implies a distinct personality to be lost and to be found again. Neither the part nor the whole is personal where all is One. This is understood by the Neo-Hegelians, who con sistently recognize that in holding nothing to be in the end real, except the Whole, they must give up personality. With other values it suffers a change or is "transcended" in the Absolute. This view, of which Bernard Bosanquet and F. H. Bradley were the most distinguished English exponents, would render unintel ligible the profoundest experiences of personality, feeling itself to be in contact with reality. That this feeling corresponds with truth, is a conviction which seems confirmed when the problem is considered in the light not only of theory of knowledge and of logic, but of history and practical experience.