2O4 The Awakening of Personality [CH. 



data of sensation, so that the mind-factor comes in in- 

 evitably a fact which is a commonplace of philosophy 

 but because, if pressed, it is unable to explain the 

 simplest phenomenon of the living organism. 



When we turn from the individual organism to the 

 race we find more or less steady progress in freedom. 

 Such progress is the key-note of evolution. As we move 

 upward we meet with a gradual change. Mere discri- 

 mination between possible courses of action becomes 

 definite volition, and something that we may term will 

 appears. 



In the race, then, there is increasing freedom ; in the 

 individual this appears as increasing power of mani- 

 festing will. Something seems to indwell the whole pro- 

 cess of life, giving to it an intrinsic value far above its 

 apparent worth. 



In all these early stages the creature is a unity in 

 itself, an individual with individual aims. But yet it 

 appears to be a part of some greater unity. The indi- 

 vidual is merged in the race. Although individual it is 

 not personal. Not being self-conscious, it cannot see 

 beyond the moment's needs, nor realise the worth of its 

 experiences as a whole. The organism only becomes a 

 personal being when of freedom and will is begotten the 

 consciousness that can say / will when it begins to 

 think itself as its own object. The perpetual realisation 

 of the self as its own object is one of the essential fea- 

 tures of personality; and till this comes there is no 

 personality 1 . 



1 At first the insistence in Christian doctrine on the description 

 of the Son as "Eternally Begotten of the Father" strikes us as 

 strange and unnecessary; but the phrase acquires fresh meaning 

 and new importance when we realise its significance as a state- 

 ment of the Eternal Personality of the Godhead. If this internal 

 essential of personal being were at any time absent from the God- 

 heaci. God would not be Personal, but a pure Unity, almost un- 



