84 The Triunity of Man [CH. 



I cannot think of myself as creative or active simply, but 

 as a creative or active being; I cannot think of myself as 

 a mere other to myself but as a being that is another for 

 myself; a being which mediates thought; I cannot 

 think of myself as free ; but as a free being. 



Which ever of these aspects of myself I consider I 

 promptly hypostatise it. Without this process of hypo- 

 stasis I cannot think myself at all. 



The full significance of this and the suggestions that 

 follow will only emerge when we have made a much 

 more detailed study of personality, which we shall do 

 in the next chapter. 



I can then, and not merely can, but I must and do, 

 look upon myself as three hypostatised functions, three 

 personal entities, when I, by introspection, consider 

 what makes up the unity that I call myself. 



Our next questions follow at once from this, and are 

 vitally important. Are these hypostatised functions 

 really three separate beings? And if they are not, am I 

 not regarding one being, who is myself, in three different 

 aspects, and for the moment attaching the particular 

 aspect I am regarding to the concept of being; by a 

 certain process of abstraction excluding the others from 

 my purview for the time? 



Certainly we must answer the first of these questions 

 in the negative. I am one, and any process of abstract 

 reasoning which appears to make me three is shown to 

 be false in its premisses by the very fact that it reaches 

 a conclusion definitely at variance with the very con- 

 crete fact of which I am more certain than of any other. 



Is not, then, my hypostatising of the three aspects 

 of my being due to an artificial process of abstraction? 

 Again we must unhesitatingly answer No; though the 

 full reasons for doing so will only appear after we have 

 analysed the concept of personality in considerable de- 

 tail. For the moment we can only say that in these 



