Personality (philosophy)

“ Had man been visited by much keener sensations, and hurried along by much stronger passions, and endowed with a much more perfect reason, the realisation of his own personality, together with the consequences it involves, would then have been a matter of much greater difficulty to him than it now is ”

“ And this, too, in such a way that we are forced to consider the same determinations at one time as personified in the self-subsistent and Divine personality, and at another that which appears most essentially to belong to the human heart. ”

“ Personality, that supreme moral and emotional factor in human life, must of necessity create an atmosphere about it, permeated with its individual tastes and mental attributes, distinct and powerful in proportion to its individual distinction and its strength. ”

“ The person, in other words, is the visible or tangible phenomenon of something inward—the phase or function by which an individual agent takes his place in the common world of human intercourse and interaction, and plays his peculiar and definite part in life. [4] But this totality of consciousness, so far from reducing man to a 'mere manufactured article,' gives to personality its unique distinction. By personality all things are dominated. ”

“ This heart throbs violently and eternally with the thirst of self-knowledge, as though in it all those substances and forces of nature that have created the human personality as the highest expression of their complexity and wisdom aspired to clarify the meaning and aim of life. ”

“ but I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretly. ”

“ Just as character is the inner phase of Human Nature, so is personality its outer phase. To many the two terms are synonymous, but analysis will show the shades of difference between them. A man's character is his inner self, while his personality is the outward indication of his self. ”

“ Popularly, we call that man original who stands on his own feet, uses the thoughts of others only to stimulate and supplement his own, and who does his best to color borrowed thought with the hue of his own personality. ”

“ But in our evolving universe of relative perfection and imperfection we rejoice that disagreement and misunderstanding are possible, for thereby is evidenced the fact and the act of personality in the universe. And if our creation is an existence dominated by personality, then can you be assured of the possibilities of personality survival, advancement, and achievement; we can be confident of personality growth, experience, and adventure. What a glorious universe, in that it is personal and progressive, not merely mechanical or even passively perfect! ”

“ Turning now from the question of content to that of origin, we must consider first the genesis of the good self, not in the world in general, but in the will of the individual: and the question here is, how is it possible for the self to identify itself with what seems to be altogether outside it? How is it that I can feel pleasure in the successes of persons and causes which do not affect my private personality? how can I desire their furtherance, not as means but as an end? How can the content of my will be not myself, as this or that exclusive individual? ”

“ Not to be conscious of one's self is, mentally speaking, not to be. This complex entity, this little cosmos of a world, the 'I,' has for its very law of existence, self-consciousness, while personality is the effect it produces upon the consciousness of others. ”

“ He loved others because of the belief he found in their natures. "After all," he writes, "it is not the external appearance of a man, nor what he says or does, that ought to excite our admiration or distrust, but that inner personality, the individuality, the soul, which is ' the all and in all,' and of which appear- ances are but imperfect representations and expressions." ”

“ He is, above everything else, a personality, and to be a personality is to have characteristics, to be limited by characteristics; he is a Being, not us but dealing with us and through us, he has an aim and that means he has a past and future ”

“ Either consciously or unconsciously such a personality becomes our ideal and model; we idolize it, idealize it, and imitate it, until it becomes a part of us. Not only do we find these great personalities living in the flesh, but we find them also in books, from whose pages they speak to us, and to whose influence we respond. ”

“ Here was a revelation of what, afterwards, was often revealed to me, that human personality is the crowning wonder of this wonderful universe, and that the forces which turn fire-mist into stars are not more inscrutable than is human character. ”

“ But the psychologist has yet more to tell us about the nature of personality. Although helped to distinctiveness of self-conscious expression by means of its experience of the struggle under present material conditions, it is not the whole of it that can be thus expressed. ”

“ This is precisely what we have to do with regard to that "vanishing-point of sensation" which is the substratum of the soul. The situation resolves itself into this. The highest, deepest, most precious thing we know or can imagine is personality. Personality is and must be our ultimate synthesis, our final ideal, and the origin of all our ideals. Nothing can be conceived more true, more real, more spiritual than personality. ”

“ It by no means follows because our conception of personality is derived from finite beings, that it is necessarily limited to them; and that it cannot be thought of in connection with a being, some of whose attributes are infinite and others perfect; in other words, that the idea of finiteness is necessarily involved in that of personality. What are the conceptions that make up the idea of our own personality? I reply, the power to affirm “I” of one's own being—the possession of will—the power of self-consciousness, and these in union with rationality. ”

“ The recognition by {18} psychology of respect for personality as one of the three or four most fundamental conditions—if not the most essential of all—of happiness, of character, and of influence, is explicit confirmation of the truth of this element of the social consciousness. ”

“ They are suspended in the individual soul, which half-creates and half-discovers the universe according to their influence.
Personality is the only permanent thing in life; and if truth, beauty, goodness, and love, are to have permanence they must depend for their permanence not upon some imaginary law in a universe half-created by personality but upon the indestructible nature of personality itself. ”

“ But it remained for our day and generation to discover the real word—personality—meaning the most perfect combination possible of man's highest attributes. At least that would be the definition in its fullest sense.
Of course everyone has a certain personality and, no matter in what degree, its possession is valuable. Personality is an acorn, so to speak, which may be cultivated into a sturdy oak. Personality is one's inner self outwardly expressed. It represents the conquest of our weaknesses and naturally impresses our strength of character upon others. ”

“ It is an uncommon view to see from its height the myriad tools, whose personality is continually absorbed into the immovable personality of our Order. What a might we possess! Verily, I am always swayed with admiration, aye, almost frightened, that man once thinks, wishes, believes, and acts as he alone lists, until, soon ours, he becomes but a human shell ”

“ To know how to deal with such men—to know how to use them—is the problem which ambitious force is called upon to solve. Personality, individuality, force of character, or by whatever name we choose to designate original and vigourous manhood, is the best thing which nature has in her gift. ”

“ But, if so, where is the difficulty of my object being one and the same with the object of other people; so that, having filled the form of my personality with a life not merely mine, I have at heart, and have identified with and made one with myself, objective interests, things that are to be, and in and with the existence of which I am not to satisfy my mere private self ”

“ It is the ego's purpose to learn to be fully active on all planes, even the physical.
Suppose you have an ego whose principal method of manifesting himself is by affection. That quality is what he wants exhibited by his personality, and if you down here try to feel strong affection and make a specialty of that, the ego will promptly throw more of himself down into the personality, because he finds in it exactly what he desires. Be careful to provide what he needs, and he will quickly take advantage of it. ”

“ It is as impertinent to decry the worth of experience because it is connected with a self as it is fantastic to [pg 293] idealize personality just as personality aside from the question what sort of a person one is. ”

“ This assertion is justified by an appeal to human experience. Men become sure of their own or of other people's personality by experiencing strong contrasts of natures in themselves or by observing them in others. ”

“ All conceptions, qualities, principles, forces, elements, thoughts, ideas, are things which we abstract from personality, and project into the space which surrounds us, as if they could be independent of the personal unity from which they have been taken. We are compelled by the inevitable necessity of thought itself, which cannot escape from the world of sense-impressions, to think of personality as possessing for its "substratum" "something" which gives it concrete reality. ”

“ And the essence of that interior knowledge with which we know personality is our recognition of the unfathomable duality within ourselves. We cannot imagine the good in us as existing without the evil in us; and we cannot imagine the evil in us as existing without the good in us. ”

“ There was a time when the inherent personality of a man, the color of his eyes, the capacity of his mind, the quality of his character, seemed clearly subject to the caprice of forces beyond the reach of mortal perception. ”

“ Thus the personality is something that travels on the wings of sound. But is that all? Is there not something more, something imperceptible which yet exercises a secret power over our emotions and passions? ”

“ We discern some of the roots of our own being, and appreciate one side of our own character better—both as loving it and as noting where its weak points lie—when we see it thus remotely working in a bygone world and under outlived fashions, yet keeping so intimately true to the genius of the type. We get a glimpse of our vocation, see that we stand for a spirit that human life will always need to have expressed. ”

“ As physical life propagates and thus continues itself, so personality is transmitted in unconscious innumerable ways. The step and carriage of the body, the glance of the eye, the work of our hands, our silences no less than our speech, all express what we are. As everything follows upon what we are, so our responsibility is to be, to be ourselves completely, perfectly. ”

“ There is nothing left to say of him which he did not cheerfully and truthfully say of himself. "I am intensely interested in my own personality," he began one day; "but we are all interesting to ourselves, or ought to be. ”

“ The primary self alone possesses true personality, will, and self-control. The primary self alone is a law unto itself,—a personality having the power of investigating its own nature, of discovering faults, creating ideals, striving after them, struggling for them, and by efforts of will attaining to higher and higher stages of personality. ”

“ Control by the subjective mind nearly always produces in the subject either a feeling of dual personality, in which two egos are realized, each distinct from the other—the old me and the new me—or else the subjective mind is identified with a totally distinct, extrinsic and usually superior individual ”

“ Man you shall find dependent for his moral personality upon his fellows, upon nature as a whole for his evolution, and upon his own ideas, poor and finite and fleeting although they are, for his very consciousness of his relation to the universe. ”

“ He sees himself in all he sees. And this self that a man sees crystallized in all his world of sense, of society, and of philosophy, is simply his own fashion of conduct, his busy world-building temperament. ”

“ But those that are peculiar to, or acquire a dominating position and influence in the personality, play their part—and even a greater part than the primitive instinctive dispositions—in distinguishing the character of one personality from that of another. For 534in a large measure they determine the reaction to situations, the behavior and the modes of thought as intellectual processes. ”

“ He may waver hither and thither, uncertain as to himself; at last, however, his innermost tendency of life will prevail and press him into the view of the world corresponding to his individuality. Upon its further development worldly and local influences will play a very important part. But the deciding factor in giving the direction is personality. ”

“ These attributes are not applicable to a human personality; being as a rule judgments of character intuitively and not critically approved, which are projected upon our fellow-beings, inevitably doing serious injury to human relations. ”

“ Whoever lives at a lower level than this constant translation of pictured potency into energetic reality: whoever, seeing the picture of the self he wants to be, suffers aught less noble and less imperative than that to determine his action misses the mark of personality. ”

“ In the first place, it proves that they have not yet acquired the notion of their own personality. Whatever their intellectual or rational state may in other respects be, they have not combined with it the conception of self. ”

“ We feel the influence of some potent personality, but think little of the causes that have fitted us to do so; yet, to be able to trace and understand those causes, would give us a far more comprehensive theory of our moral nature than to be able to analyze and measure with the utmost accuracy the special personal influence by which we are so strongly affected. ”