DISCOVERY 



335 



of birds like so many stamps, nor even only photographs 

 of birds, but to have a definite problem in his mind which 

 he can solve by persistent watching, by penetrating into 

 the secrets of the birds' intimate life. 



Yours, etc., 

 JuLi.\N S. Huxley. 

 New College, 



Oxford. 

 October 14, 1922. 



THE PROBLEM OF PERSONALITY 



To the Editor of Discovery 



Sir, 



I have read with much interest Mr. J. S. Huxley's 

 letter on this subject, and agree with him that personality 

 cannot be a thing independent of the organic structure 

 and physiological life of the person. There are, however, 

 some important aspects of natural personality which 

 he does not deny, but fails to note ; and on these I should 

 like to be allowed to say a few words. 



An individual organism cannot be regarded as a mere 

 product or passive outcome of the two factors, heredity 

 and environment. Each organism is itself, being a 

 unique centre of relations, both to its progenitors and 

 possible descendants, and to its presently-conditioning 

 surroundings — to the ground and air (or water) and 

 plants and animals in the particular terrestrial place or 

 series of places in which it lives, and to the particular 

 portions of food which it assimilates. Even a pebble, 

 though devoid of life and growth, is itself. It is not any 

 other pebble which may happen to be its exact counter- 

 part in shape and substance. Nor is it wholly a product 

 of antecedent and external forces. Its own sub.stance 

 is a small part of what was the substance of its parent 

 rock, but the form which it acquired in breaking away 

 therefrom gives it a separate identity, and, if it has 

 since been rounded and polished by the action of the waves, 

 its own substance and its own original form were both 

 necessary conditions of what it has now become. The 

 formation of a pebble through essentially disintegrative 

 forces is, of course, a process very different from the 

 regular integrative development of an organism ; but 

 I suggest that the selfhood of each living organism cannot 

 be something less, and is, in fact, something much more, 

 than the selfhood of each pebble. The organism is not 

 a thing made by abstract conditions called " heredity " 

 and " environment," but a thing which makes itself in 

 accordance with certain hereditary tendencies and with 

 the external means which it finds for their exercise. 



While the above would be true of an individual plant, 

 it is only in the case of animals, with their nervous 

 systems and powers of contingent activity, that self- 

 hood appears to be dimly felt, and only in the case of 

 human beings that it comes to be clearly reflected upon. 

 It is, I suggest, with the reflective knowledge of selfhood 

 that what is properly called " personality " arises. A 

 scientific induction associates personality and personal 

 consciousness with a part of the brain and nervous 

 system but the person's " common sense " has previously 



associated them with the sensitive skin-envelope, the 

 eyes in looking, the ears in hearing, the voice in speaking, 

 and with all voluntary muscular actions, and has, at the 

 same time, contrasted these outward instruments of 

 personality with the inner stream of perception, thoughts, 

 emotions, desires, and decisions. 



Personality differs from actual consciousness, or 

 presently-passing experience, in that it involves per- 

 manent aptitudes for perceiving, thinking, feeling, and 

 willing in a great variety of different ways, according 

 to the particular situations presented to our senses or 

 the particular thoughts evoked by listening to speech, 

 reading, writing, or meditating. Very little of all that 

 we are accustomed to perceive or do or think or feel 

 can be simultaneously presented to consciousness ; and 

 hence our knowledge of our own personalities, like that 

 of our inner bodily organisms, is mostly indirect. In 

 actual consciousness the awareness of personality seems 

 to consist in a general sense of one's personal powers 

 connected with some memory of one's past experiences. 

 This awareness, absent in sound sleep, is curiously 

 travestied in dreams, while personality itself is perverted 

 in the mental aberrations of the insane, some of whom 

 seem to have dual personalities. 



As an aspect of the whole person, personality is the 

 mental and morally social, not the physical and physio- 

 logical aspect. It is the person's character — his distinc- 

 tive type of human nature — in which the instincts 

 derived from animal or low human ancestry are more or 

 less controlled or sublimated by ideas and ideals, beliefs 

 and reasonings, due to educative influences and personal 

 reflection, and constituting personal intelligence. Only 

 at its best does such intelligence approximate to true 

 reason. True reason is not egocentric, but actuated 

 by the objective interests of careful observation and 

 clear thinking and allied to human sympathy and the 

 sense of justice, which are, together with it, the con- 

 ditions of personality developing on other than merely 

 selfish lines. 



Mr. J. S. Huxley says that environmental factors 

 " undoubtedly play a relatively small part in forming 

 personality compared with those which are hereditarily 

 determined." Here I cannot agree with him, as I think 

 that the normal human brain must be made by the 

 evolving individual life (not wholly on ancestral lines), 

 that it is an extremely plastic instrument, and that most 

 of what a civilised human being is is derived from the 

 social culture-heritage, the elements of which are imparted 

 to him by education and the personal influences of those 

 with whom he comes in contact from childhood upwards. 

 This fact, if it be such, cuts both ways, ethically speaking. 

 Many of the traditional beliefs on which so-called civilised 

 people are taught to conduct their lives are as pernicious 

 as are any of the primitve instincts derived from their 

 savage or barbarian ancestors, and may indeed afford 

 shelter and excuse for such instincts. On the other hand, 

 there is hope that mankind's wisdom will increase, as 

 genuine knowledge, based on observation, experiment, 

 research, and reflection, is made widely accessible, and 

 especially as the habit of sincere personal thinking — 



