PERSIAN POWDER 



PERSONALITY 



73 



abundance of good anchorage, either in the numer- 

 ous bays or in the lee of islands. The greater 

 Iiortion of its southern shores now belongs to the 

 main of Muscat, while the whole of the northern 

 shore belongs to Persia. The order of the periodic 

 currents in this gulf is precisely the reverse of that 

 of the Red Sea (q.v.) currents, as they ascend from 

 May to October, and descend from October to May. 

 The greatest depth does not exceed 50 fathoms ; 

 and Dr John Murray calculates its total cubic 

 contents at 2200 cubic miles of water. Oriental 

 ^eographers give to this gulf the name of the 



Green Sea,' from a remarkable strip of water, 



if a green colour, lying along the Arabian coast. 



The submarine telegraph cables Ijelonging to the 

 government of India, and forming part of the system 

 of the Indo-European Telegraph, pass through the 

 whole length of the Persian Gulf, from Fao at the 

 mouth of the Sliat-el-Arab, where they connect 

 with the Turkish lines, to Bushire, where they 

 connect with the Persian, and thence to Jask, 

 Gwadur, and Kurrachee, where they connect with 

 the general telegraph system of India. Among 

 the ports are Bender Abbas (q.v.), Bushire (q.v.), 

 and Lingah ( pop. 8000 ). 



Persian Powder. See INSECT-POWDER. 



Persigny, JEAX GILBERT VICTOR FIALIN, 

 Due DE, an adherent of Napoleon III., was born 

 at Saint-Germain-l'Espinasse (dept. Loire), llth 

 Januarv 1808, entered the cavalry school at Saumur 

 in 1826", and the 4th Hussars in 1828 ; but he was 

 expelled from the army for insubordination in 1831. 

 Then, having been introduced to Louis Napoleon, 

 he secured his favour, and commenced a career of 

 lionapartist propagandism throughout France and 

 Germany. He had the chief hand iu the affair of 

 Strasburg (1836) and in the descent on Boulogne 

 (1840), but was captured there, and condemned to 

 twenty years' imprisonment. On the breaking out 

 of the revolution in 1848 Persigny was one of the 

 men who secured the election of Napoleon as 

 President of the Republic ; he also took a promi- 

 nent part in the coujt il'ftat of December 1851. In 

 January 1852 he succeeded De Morny as minister 

 of the Interior; from 1855 to 1860 (except for one 

 year) he was ambassador at the English court; 

 then he resumed the ollice of minister of the 

 Interior until June 1863. In September of the 

 same year he was created duke. Thereafter he 

 sat in the senate until the fall of the empire, when 

 he escaped to England. He died at Nice on 12th 

 January 1872. 



Persimmon. See DATE PLUM. 



Persins (AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS), third in 

 the line of Roman satirists, being later than Luci- 

 lius ;m<l Horace and earlier than Juvenal, was in 

 some respects the ablest, certainly the most drama- 

 tic, of the four. Born of a distinguished equestrian 

 family, 4th December 34 A.D., at Volaterrfe in 

 Etruria, he lost his father when six years old, was 

 educated till twelve in his native town, and there- 

 after in Rome under the grammarian Remmius 

 I'al.-emon and the rhetorician Verginius Flavius. 

 In early manhood he came under the ennobling 

 influence of the Stoic philosopher Cornutus, who 

 imbue.! Mm with the tenets of his school and gave 

 his mind ami character an impress which ever 

 deepened and strengthened. But he died liefore 

 completing his twenty-eighth year (62 A.D.). 

 The admiration ami affection entertained by the 

 master for his pupil was shared liy the friends 

 of the latter Luoan, CiraiiiR Bassus, the lyric 

 poet, and other contemporaries of light and 

 leading, among whom, however, Seneca had little 

 attraction for the young author. The noble 

 ami virtuous P;etns Thrasea accompanied him on 

 everal tours through Italy, finding a kindred soul 



in the modest, prepossessing youth, whose integrity 

 and piety were conspicuous in his worldly as in his 

 family relations. The austere discipline of Cor- 

 nutus affected the style of Persius, who in conse- 

 quence wrote fastidiously and sparingly, leaving at 

 his death six brief satires, the whole not exceeding 

 650 hexameter lines. These, slightly corrected by 

 Coniutus and edited by Ca>sius Bassus, enjoyed, 

 even through the early media-val darkness till the 

 Renaissance and down to our own day, the highest 

 esteem, fathers of the church like Augustine and 

 Jerome, humanists like Buchanan and Casaubon, 

 anticipating later schools of literature in evolving 

 and interpreting the poet's pregnant, if sometimes 

 obscure, ridicule of the rapidly degenerating life of 

 1st century paganism. The best satire is, on the 

 whole, the first, on the prevailing false taste in 

 poetry. ' Probably no writer ever borrowed so much 

 and yet left on the mind so decided an impression 

 of originality,' says Conington, who further indi- 

 cates the striking resemblance between the genius 

 of Persius and that of Carlyle. He has had many 

 editors, of whom the most helpful have been 

 Casaubon (1605), Otto Jahn (1843-68), and Con- 

 ington, whose edition, revised by Nettleship (Ox- 

 ford, 1878), gives text, prose translation, ami notes 

 embodying the best results of previous criticism. 

 He has had a host of translators in the chief modern 

 languages that of the Italian Sacchi of Faenza 

 surpassing all others, not excepting the English 

 versions by Dryden and Gifford. 



Person ( Lat. persona, ' a mask ' ) came to be 

 applied to the person wearing the mask, and thus 

 to mean a personage, an individual, a numerically 

 distinct being. In theology there is a special use of 

 the word for the three Persons of the Trinity (q.v.). 

 The name Persona, Person, was first applied to the 

 Trinity by the Latins ; the corresponding Greek 

 word, Prosopon, being of later use. The earlier Greek 

 Fathers used the word Hypostasis, 'substance,' 

 where the Latins used Persona, and considerable 

 controversy for a time grew out of this diverse use ; 

 after the condemnation of the Sabellian heresy, 

 and still more after the Council of Nicsea, all 

 ambiguity of words being at an end, the controversy 

 turned upon the substance of the doctrine, in the 

 form of the Arian controversy. See ARIUS. 



Personal Equation. See EQUATIONS. 



Personal Exception, in the law of Scotland, 

 the equivalent of the English Estojytel (q.v.); a 

 ground of objection which applies to an individual 

 and prevents him from doing something which, but 

 for Ins conduct or situation, he might do. 



Personality, as used in philosophy, signifies the 

 distinctive attribute or attributes which distinguish 

 a person from an animal or a thing. A thinjj we 

 ordinarily consider to be unconscious, an animal 

 to be conscious, a person to be self-conscious. That 

 is to say, we suppose the animal to have intelligent 

 experience of a kind, without being able to reflect 

 upon that experience, and so to be conscious of 

 itself as the unitary subject whose the experience 

 is. The last is the essential mark of personality in 

 the intellectual sphere. ' A person, says Locke, 

 ' stands for a thinking intelligent being, that has 

 reason and reflection, and can consider itself as 

 itself, the same thinking being in different times 

 and places' (Essay, ii. 27). In the moral sphere 

 personality means self-determination or reason- 

 directed will, and may be said to be the founda- 

 tion of moral responsibility. Hence the central 

 position which it occupies in the ethics of Kant and 

 Hegel. The consciously realised unity and identity 

 of the individual thus constitutes what is most 

 distinctive of personality as such. But under the 

 name of Double Personality or Double Contciottmtss 

 the records of medical science contain many 



