A WORLD OF PERSONALITY 115 



theories, just as his are, though he is putting 

 them to immediate practical use, while we 

 are not. 



The conclusion thus reached is that the 

 world of our experience is a world of 

 personality. We can reach this conclusion 

 either from the purely philosophical side, with 

 Kant and the other philosophers, through the 

 abstract demonstration that the world we see 

 is the world as we see it. Or we can reach it 

 from the side of human history, through the 

 more concrete demonstration that the world 

 we see is the world which by painful human 

 effort we have gradually learned to fashion in 

 thought and action. The claim sometimes 

 advanced on behalf of natural science that it 

 deals with absolute reality, independent of 

 man himself, cannot be maintained. 



We must now examine more closely the 

 difference between the conception of a person 

 or conscious organism and that of a mere 

 organism as such. The higher organisms are 

 evidently conscious, like ourselves, though 

 they may be aware of far less than we are. As 

 we go down the scale of organic life we gradu 

 ally lose the evidences of consciousness. We 



