Personal equation

“ A man's personal equation, as astronomers call the effect of his individuality, is kin, for all its complexity, to those simple algebraical problems which so puzzled us at school. To solve either we must begin by knowing the values of the constants that enter into its expression. ”

“ Of course every business man solves the problem practically according to his temperament and education, and I suppose that on first thoughts every business man would answer you accordingly. But perhaps the personal equation is something you wish to eliminate from the definition. ”

“ Of the personal equation, in its widest sense, there are many examples even more suggestive and worthy of extended treatment than these which have received mathematical measurement. These examples are to be found in all human action, and in the result of all human work. Noticeably is this true in all acts and occupations which have their basis and lowest forms in acts of imitation. ”

“ Very generally this Personal Equation has been looked upon as a certain indefinable possession enjoyed by the favored few. In a certain sense this is true. Personality is largely inherent in the individual and therefore differs as fully as do individuals. ”

“ The source of error in human logic is what the philosophers call the ‘personal equation.’ My machine eliminated the personal equation; it proceeded from cause to effect, from premise to conclusion, with steady precision. The human intellect is fallible ”

“ However accurate, unbiassed, and mechanical in action they may seek to be, it happens that one takes the time earlier or later than the other. Consequently there is always a variation in the product, which has to be rectified by adding a constant. This is what is called the personal equation—a something we have heard about in literature and art as well as in science. ”

“ For it is always difficult in personal matters to differentiate and to determine causes. In mechanical concerns it is not difficult. But in the calculation of causes which constitute the value of a person as a working [Pg 70] force one often finds oneself baffled. The result frequently seems either more or less than an equivalent of the co-operating forces. The personal factor, the personal equation counts immensely. ”

“ Since personal characteristics are the cause of a constant error, it follows that two observers of equal skill, using instruments of equal accuracy in observing and recording a large number of occurrences, will always differ from each other in the results obtained, and in an amount that will always be the same. This constant difference between the results given by two observers is called their relative personal equation. The four-fifths of a second between the records of Mr. ”

“ We should arrive at the personal relation of the individual to ends theoretical and practical, ends which call for realization, but which from their nature cannot be realized in a finite personality. And, once more here, our standard must be called in when we endeavour, as we must, to form a comparative estimate. For, apart from the success or failure of the individual’s will, these ideas of ultimate goodness and reality themselves possess, of course, very different values. ”

“ The only form of thing that we directly encounter, the only experience that we concretely have, is our own personal life. The only complete category of our thinking, our professors of philosophy tell us, is the category of personality, every other category being one of the abstract elements of that. ”

“ My task in trying to come to clearer consciousness about the world is to discriminate what it is that I acknowledge.” It is indifferent, from this point of view, where I begin. Any ɑ and b will do to start my investigation. Observe facts, and then look for their linkages. That is the one maxim of my procedure, — the maxim of descriptive science stated in its most abstract form. The choice of a specialty is indeed a personal matter; and because of human narrowness any one man has to confine himself to his own specialty. ”

“ What affects me more than all, is what relates to myself, for it has always been a habit of mine to bring everything to a personal test, to weigh it upon my own scales. These questions I have often asked, “Why was I created as I was, in a condition where I had to come in contact with vice in my earliest years? ”

“ No reference has been made, in this summary of the factors which determine our estimate of the worth of personal ideals, to the bearing of these ideals upon other people's lives. Actually, of course, the social values of even primarily personal ideals are impossible to overlook, and often bulk larger than the merely personal values. ”

“ I believe that, in point of fact, when drawing inferences from our personal experience, and not from maxims handed down to us by books or tradition, we much oftener conclude from particulars to particulars directly, than through the intermediate agency of any general proposition. We are constantly reasoning from ourselves to other people, or from one person to another, without giving ourselves the trouble to erect our observations into general maxims of human or external nature. ”

“ It is here that we begin to find the benefit of a Divine Standard of Human Individuality. That also is an Infinite Principle, and by identifying ourselves with it we bring to bear upon the abstract conception of infinite Impersonal Power a corresponding conception of Infinite Personality, so that we thus import the Personal Factor which is able to use the Power without imposing any strain upon ourselves. ”

“ For instance, no experience of an individual, however near he may stand to us, can be perfect, so that we could have a logical right to make a complete estimate of him ; all estimates are rash, and must be so. Finally, the standard by which we measure, our nature, is not of unalterable dimensions,—we have moods and vacillations, and yet we should have to recognise ourselves as a fixed standard in order to estimate correctly the relation of any thing whatever to ourselves. ”

“ It is only by regarding, as it seems to me, the conception or idea of the empirical self as a secondary unitary complex organized by experience that we can approach the solution of the problem of the self and understand the phenomenon of two selves in one personality, as so often occurs in multiple personality. ”

“ If too severe in some directions, this criticism is substantially sound. It does not matter what theory of personality we adopt, in a philosophical sense, if that theory upholds personal confidence and force of will. ”

“ On these terms the personal self rather than the thought might be treated as the immediate datum in psychology. The universal conscious fact is not 'feelings and thoughts exist,' but 'I think' and 'I feel.' [216] No psychology, at any rate, can question the existence of personal selves. The worst a psychology can do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as to rob them of their worth. ”

“ By continuing analysis further we incorporate some distinctly impersonal universal basic qualities of humanity with the personal consciousness, which brings about the aforesaid enlargement, and this to some extent may be described as an unpleasant consequence of analysis. ”

“ The more personal, social and moral traits, however, such as coöperativeness, unselfishness, kindliness, cheerfulness, and integrity, show large divergence of the individual judgment with both groups. The average measures of variability for these traits, in the order named, are 119.3, 110.5, 122.9, 121.0, and 117.5. There is another group of traits which, while showing only about average variability with one group, show close agreement in the other: such as will, judgment, perseverance, leadership and breadth. ”

“ The study of it in all its bearings is called the study of individual differences. When the traits involved are mental, we speak of the psychology of individual differences. It is one of the marvelous facts about human beings that of all the millions born, no two are just equal in possession of a given trait, except by chance; and no two are identical in their combinations of traits, for the infinite possibilities of permutation practically exclude identity by chance. These combinations, which go to make up personality, are combinations of amounts of the same traits. ”

“ What relation exists between the individual's opinion of himself and the results of objective measurements of him, such as those afforded by psychological tests? How do the results of tests compare with the judgments of associates? [Pg 125]
8. Are individuals who themselves possess a given trait in high degree better judges of that trait in themselves or in others than are those who possess the trait in less degree?
9. What intercorrelations exist between the estimates of self and others, when different traits are compared? ”

“ Have such guides to the introspective analysis of the self been formulated, and by whom, where, and when?
4. How reliable and consistent are an individual's judgments of his own characteristics, interests, and aptitudes? Has one any constant tendency to overestimate or underestimate himself?
5. Do the degree of reliability and consistency, and this constant error vary in any way with the individual, with the circumstances, and with the particular trait that is being estimated?
6. How is the individual's judgment of himself likely to compare with the impression of him which his associates form? ”

“ And whoever studies our natural history, must remember that empirical psychology raises, but does not by itself solve, the philosophical problem: What, in my real essence, am I, this person? In the proper union of psychology with philosophy lies the solution of this problem. Having studied finite individuality in ourselves, we shall proceed to the question of the relation of our individuality to the Absolute, by briefly considering in what sense our Absolute is a self-conscious individual, and what is our relation to such absolute individuality. ”

“ Now science, on the other hand, these positivists say, has proved that personality, so far from being an elementary force in nature, is but a passive resultant of the really elementary forces, physical, chemical, physiological, and psycho-physical, which are all impersonal and general in character. Nothing individual accomplishes anything in the universe save in so far as it obeys and exemplifies some universal law. ”

“ The purpose of the theory is just to enable us to compare different experiences in respect of their value; and their value, I suggest, is a quantitative matter. To put it briefly the best life is that in which as much as possible of our possible personality is engaged. And of two personalities that one is the better in which there is more which can be engaged without confusion. We all know people of unusually wide and varied possibilities who pay for their width in disorder, and we know others who pay for their order by narrowness. ”

“ Just as the causal method finally reaches the general principles of human psychology by the analysis and reduction of individual events, so does the constructive standpoint reach aims that are general by the synthesis of individual tendencies. ”

“ Yet perceiving this development or change, and, more faintly, the need of balance and equation which runs through all and underlies all, man has set about the task of writing about it, framing the inescapable equational laws which all changes suggest and compel into definite unbreakable commands from a definite God, singing songs about Him, painting pictures of Him, and directing attention to what man has ignorantly assumed to be a universal source of supply which will or should permit the greatest possible number to live under some such scheme of equation as is here suggested. ”

“ Whatever be the purpose of self analysis, it will be the more useful and suggestive the more completely it compasses the total range of capacities and inclinations. Comparison of different analyses by different individuals should result in a synthesis of traits, an acceptable terminology and a mode of statement better calculated to throw light on individual equipment than is secured by the methods of casual and unguided rumination. ”

“ Each determined potency marks a determined quantitative difference of the subjective and objective. Each individual Being is the result of a quantitative difference of subjectivity and objectivity. The individual expresses absolute identity under a determined form of Being:” so that each side is itself a relative totality, A = B, and at the same time the one factor preponderates in the one, and the other factor in the other, but both remain absolute identity. ”

“ If you posit Ego=A, you will find in the constructing of this A, that inseparable therefrom, a B connects with it, and in the contemplation of the constructing of this B, you will likewise find that a C connects with it, and so on, until you have arrived at the last link of A, namely, at completely determined self-consciousness. ”

“ Here we have an array of traits that are of great importance to the individual's success in his work, in his social relationships and in his family life; and it is a proof of how much remains to be accomplished in psychology that we cannot as yet present anything like a real scientific analysis of personality, nor show on what elementary factors it depends. ”

“ It is not merely incidentally, as a grateful addition to its normal task, that psychology serves us. The essential nature of the standpoint which calls it into existence, and of the abstraction which it performs, is to put in our possession the method by which values are introduced and effected in life. The statement of personality as an object, of social relations as a mechanism of stimuli and inhibitions, is precisely the statement of ends in terms of the method of their realization. ”