30 ANIMAL INDIVIDUALITY [CH. 



To such an individuality, one that can thus 

 transcend the limits of its substance, the name of 

 Personality is commonly given. Man alone possesses 

 true personality, though there is as it were an aspira- 

 tion towards it visible among the higher vertebrates, 

 stirring their placid automatism with airs of con- 

 sciousness. In man, personality is usually defined 

 with reference to self-consciousness rather than to 

 individuality ; but the power of reflection and self- 

 knowledge is linked up, in our one type of personality 

 at least, with the new flight of the individuality- 

 conscious memory seems necessarily to imply a vast 

 increase of independence, so that it is all one whether 

 we define the possessor of a personality as a self- 

 conscious individual, or as an individual whose 

 individuality is more extensive both in space and 

 time than the material substance of its body. 



Personality, as we know it, is free compared with 

 the individuality of the lower animals ; but it is still 

 weighted with a body. There may be personalities 

 which have not merely transcended substance, but 

 are rid of it altogether : in all ages the theologian 

 and the mystic have told of such "disembodied 

 spirits," postulated by the one, felt by the other, and 

 now the psychical investigator with his automatic 

 writing and his cross-correspondences is seeking to 

 give us rigorous demonstration of them. 



If such actually exist, they crown Life's progress ; 



