134 PERSONALITY 





on every side. What, for instance, of the 

 history of the individual person ? Was there 

 not a time when, within his mother's womb, 

 he had no conscious existence ? And how 

 did his individual personality come into being ? 

 Not only his bodily form, but all his moral 

 and intellectual characteristics are inherited 

 from or through his parents. Is not, there 

 fore, his personality the mere outcome of 

 material or purely organic conditions? Is 

 not this rendered certain by the known fact 

 that some organic defect for instance, in his 

 thyroid gland may make him an idiot ? 



In practical life we must often, perforce, 

 satisfy ourselves with such reasoning; but 

 there is a petitio principii running through it 

 all. It is the same petitio principii that runs 

 through the whole materialistic conception of 

 the universe. We as yet know nothing of the 

 psychology of the foetus or the individual cell, 

 just as our forefathers knew nothing of the 

 physiology of the living cells which they 

 mistook for mere drops of colloid material. 

 We also know extremely little about what we 

 call matter, though we do know enough about 

 our ignorance of it to enable us to reject an 



