X PERSONALITY AS A WHOLE 283 



and a Roman idea evolved, like so many other juristic ideais, 

 by the legal genius of the Romans, which was in its way as 

 remarkable as the philosophical genius of the Greeks, j, 

 Persona in the Roman law denoted the legal status of the j- 

 individual who was by law clothed with rights and duties 

 in his own right; the individual as the carrier of rights and 

 duties in his own right was a persona; from a mere individual 

 nonentity he became in law a persona and acquired a legal 

 personality. Thus in the classical Roman law a slave, being 

 without legal rights, was a human without persona. The 

 developed Roman law came to extend the concept of per- 

 sonality beyond natural individuals to non-corporeal com- 

 panies and societies which had by law a legal entity and! 

 could have rights and duties. Personality thus was a mat-^ 

 ter of legal status, and denoted the legal dignity and im- 

 portance of the individual or the group. The clear juristic 

 concept of persona was a very good basis for the super-/ 

 structure of the psychic ethical Personality which has been/ 

 built upon it. 



To the evolution of the modern idea of Personality, 

 Christianity made the most notable contribution in investing 

 the human being as such with a character of sacredness, of 

 spiritual dignity and importance, which implied a far- 

 reaching revolution in ethical ideas. The Roman legal 

 concept thus became blended with the moral sacredness and 

 inalienable rights of human beings as children of God; and 

 philosophy raised the enriched term to the dignity and status 

 of a high philosophical conception. It has been my endea- 

 vour to go a step farther and to trace the concept of Person- f 

 ality to its real relationships in the order of the universe, 

 to show it not merely as a juristic or religious or philosophi- 

 cal concept, but as a real factor which forms the culminating 

 phase in the synthetic creative Evolution of the universe. 

 The Roman traced persona to the authority of the law. 

 The Christian traced Personality to the fatherhood of God 

 which conferred it on all human beings as a sacred birthright. 

 The Philosopher has translated this religious idea into the 

 universal language of the ethical Reason. Here Personality 



