Person (ontology)

“ The differences in individuals with which we are also familiar, are due to the varying proportions of the characters in the above table, and the characters themselves are those which constitute all the possibilities for any given person. ”

“ And by dint of all these matters, this long continued acquaintance only reviving the impressions received in early life, they had no doubt of the identity of the person. Was there ever a more perfect train of evidence exhibited to prove the identity of a person, than on the present occasion? ”

“ The literature of experimental psychology and anthropology is crammed with such examples as the above. No matter what trait of the individual be chosen, results are analogous. If one takes the simplest traits, to eliminate the most chances for confusion, one finds the same conditions every time. ”

“ For the question here is not one of terminology, but of psychology. I care not by what terms we designate these different sorts of signs; the question is whether or not they differ from one another in kind. If the term “name” is expressly reserved for signs of conceptual origin, it would be no argument, upon the basis of this definition, to say that there cannot be names without concepts; for, in terms of the definition, this would merely be to enunciate a truism: it would be merely to say that without concepts there can be no concepts, nor, à fortiori, the signs of them. ”

“ Neither is it enough to consult concerning persons, “secundum genera,”249 as in an idea or mathematical description, what the kind and character of the person should be; for the greatest errors are committed, and the most judgment is shown, in the choice of individuals. ”

“ Without knowing anything about the details of character reading as they relate to a study of the proportions and relationship of a person’s nose, chin, mouth, and so forth, most of us learn to understand people simply through the impression 99they make upon us as we meet them. ”

“ When I say that we all call the two halves by the same names, and that those names are 'me' and 'not-me' respectively, it will at once be seen what I mean. The altogether unique kind of interest which each human mind feels in those parts of creation which it can call me or mine may be a moral riddle, but it is a fundamental psychological fact. ”

“ For, as we define a concrete name by enumerating the attributes which it connotes, and as the attributes connoted by a concrete name form the entire signification of the corresponding abstract name, the same enumeration will serve for the definition of both. Thus, if the definition of a human being be this, “a being, corporeal, animated, rational, shaped so and so,” the definition of humanity will be corporeity and animal life, combined with rationality, and with such and such a shape. ”

“ Thus if anyone ask what is the mind's object when you say 'Columbus discovered America in 1492,' most people will reply 'Columbus,' or 'America,' or, at most, 'the discovery of America.' They will name a substantive kernel or nucleus of the consciousness, and say the thought is 'about' that,—as indeed it is,—and they will call that your thought's 'object.' Really that is usually only the grammatical object, or more likely the grammatical subject, of your sentence. ”

“ They have, in pursuance of their Theory, mapped out the human scull into compartments, to each of which they have assigned a particular faculty or sentiment, and they profess to tell, with some degree of accuracy, the individual character by the peculiar formation of the head. ”

“ The notions and maxims of their science do not appear to them to be the creatures of their own will; they are actual beings, with whose existence and genealogy they have become familiar from long and intimate intercourse. ”

“ The nature or essence of any individual would seem to imply in its very concept a transcendental relation of specific identity with all other actual and possible individual embodiments of this essence. ”

“ All the characters of a living being, every physical structure and every mental trait, may be placed in one of two categories. Either they are inborn or they are acquired. An inborn or innate character is one which, in common parlance, arises in the individual 'by nature.' Thus arms, legs, eyes, ears, head, etc., and all inborn characters. ”

“ In this manner we substitute the word man, for example, for the word Thomas, when we predicate the Species of the individual, in the proposition, “Thomas is a man;” the word animal, for the word man, when we predicate the Genus of the Species, in the proposition, “man, is an animal. ”

“ The names—and each name stands for a conception or idea—are our instruments for handling our problems and solving our dilemmas. Now, when we think of this, we are too apt to forget an important fact, which is that in most human beings the stock of names and concepts is mostly acquired during the years of adolescence and the earliest years of adult life. I probably shocked you a moment ago by saying that most men begin to be old fogies at the age of twenty-five. ”

“ The thing that struck the first observer is proved to be less important than he thought it. Scientific names, for all their air of learned universality, are merely fossilized impressions, stereotyped portraits of a single aspect. ”

“ We may speak of the physiognomy of a landscape, of a country, a state, a continent, or an individual, and by that we mean the external appearance, that which conveys a knowledge of the character of the object to the eye. We judge the character of the thing by its appearances; and in the relation which Physiognomy bears to character-reading, we judge the character of the man by the external appearances. We study the size and form of the body, its color, its texture, its temperament, the expression of the face and the contour of the head, all of which are physiognomical. ”

“ But in personal names the complexity of human character, and the gradual processes of tangling and disentangling the threads of varied human interest, soon come in, and personal names are not imposed once and for all. Each man in very early societies may have many names, in different characters and at different periods of his life. ”

“ It is proper to add, that the class-name is not solely a mark of the distinguishing class-attributes, it is a mark also of the objects. The name man does not merely signify the qualities of animal life, rationality, and the human form, it signifies all individual men. ”

“ Surrounding objects, then, giving origin to names of persons, and being, in the way shown, eventually mistaken for the actual progenitors of those who descend from persons nicknamed after them, it results that these surrounding objects come to be regarded as in some manner possessed of personalities like the human. ”

“ The recognition of ourselves as an entity is possible only through the knowledge we have about ourselves. We start the process as children with identification of teeth, nose, mouth, hands, name, and so on. That is the origin of our identity. The constant use of the knowledge about ourselves maintains that identity. ”

“ Not only do we give names to concrete things but we give names to specific attributes and to relations. As we organize and analyze our experiences, there appear uniformities, principles, laws. To these we give names, such as white, black, red, weight, length, thickness, justice, truth, sin, crime, heat, cold, mortal, immortal, evolution, disintegration, love, hate, envy, jealousy, possible, impossible, probable, etc. ”

“ The two great distinctions which mark the intellects of our species, seem to consist in the difference of character, which is established by those who excel in the exercise of their perceptions and consequent recollection, and those who cultivate and discipline the energies of thought. ”

“ When we wish to understand a personality we are in the habit of ascertaining the inherited characteristics, and investigating the influences exercised upon it by religion, family, environment, education, youthful impressions, experience, and so forth. ”

“ As a working basis, substantiated by the kind of proof we use in our daily lives in laboratories and machine shops, we may state that mind, character and personality are organic in their origin and are functions of the entire organism. ”

“ By 'anthropology' is meant not the anthropology of modern writers, who use the name to denote mainly the history of human culture in its more rudimentary stages, and as exhibited chiefly in material products, but the study of those aspects of psychology which are most closely allied with physiological conditions. ”

“ It is, now, a matter of interest that these studies and others that might be brought under survey suggest that our mental traits and capabilities are derived, very much as are our bodily characteristics, from hereditary endowment. ”

“ The studies of anthropology, whose final object is to solve the problems of the evolution of the human race and man's place in nature, begin with analysis, or the examination of particular characteristics. Human characteristics may be arranged, according to their bearing on anthropology and ethnography, in five orders: External physical traits ”

“ What we do claim for the science of character analysis is that it is classified knowledge based upon sound principles; that it is as accurate as the science of medicine; that it can be imparted to others ”

“ If A and B are affirmed to be similar in origin or kind, and if B is affirmed to grow into C—or to differ from both A and B only in degree,—it becomes a contradiction further to affirm that C differs from A in kind. ”

“ Be your own anthologist. Little incidents of daily life, significant happenings in the world around you, moving pages in the books you read—all can serve to illuminate the truth committed to your charge. ”

“ According to this definition, Ethology is the science which corresponds to the art of education in the widest sense of the term, including the formation of national or collective character as well as individual. ”

“ If we read the items of information attached to each name, apart from their fellows attached to succeeding names, we shall have simply a set of facts about each name, which in their combination make a strong impression of the vigor and greatness of humanity in those days, and which suggest no chronological inference. ”

“ Though, after occupying themselves with primitive arts and products, anthropologists have devoted their attention mainly to the physical characters of the human races, it must, I think, be admitted that the study of these yields in importance to the study of their psychical characters. ”

“ And we may also derive some suspicious circumstances from nature; for all these questions, whether it is a man or a woman, whether he is of this state or that one, of what ancestors a man is descended, who are his relations, what is his age, what is his disposition, what bodily strength, or figure, or constitution he has, which are all portions of a man's nature, have much influence in leading men to form conjectures. ”

“ On the material side; for he was a physiognomist, a great judge of character, and had a keen perception of all physical characteristics, qualities which he obtained by intense observation of men in disease, of men in health, and of persons in every class of society and every kind of occupation. On the intellectual side; for the phenomena of man’s external nature were to him only expressions of the mind working within,—mind the result of inheritance—mind formed by itself—mind the result of circumstance. ”

“ By comparing the histories of personalities as determined by social influences and expressed in various schemes of life we can establish a measure of the given influences. The varieties of human experience will be innumerable in their concrete details, but by the multiplication and analysis of life records we may expect to determine typical lines of the genesis of character as related to types of influence. ”

“ That which is called the ego—the sum of the various elements which make up the character—cannot, from a scientific point of view, be regarded as an entity, unless the combined forces and powers of any machine may be so regarded. ”

“ Let me urge on you here the importance of seeking in every case to acquaint yourselves with the circumstances under which any body of men who have played an important part in history, above all in the history of your own land, obtained the name by which they were afterwards themselves willing to be known, or which was used for their designation by others. ”

“ One use of etymology is that it teaches how men thus contrived, from words which expressed plain and easy thoughts, to make terms for more complex and abstruse thoughts. This is the high road along which the human mind has travelled from ignorance to knowledge. ”

“ As is well known, physical properties are hereditary and observable in any study of races; is it any wonder that a skilled glance at a man’s hand may uncover a number of facts concerning the circumstances of his life? ”

“ Among active states of mind, there is however one species which merits particular attention, because it forms a principal part of the connotation of some important classes of names. I mean volitions, or acts of the will. When we speak of sentient beings by relative names, a large portion of the connotation of the name usually consists of the actions of those beings ”