336 



DISCOVERY 



a most important factor in shaping adult personality — 



is widely stimulated. 



Yours, etc., 

 CH.A.RLES E. Hooper. 



SOUTH.-MIPTON. 



August 13, 1922; 



To the Editor of Discovery 



Sir, 



For many years I shared the difficulty which 

 Mr. Rogers n^entions in his letter. The confusion that 

 arises in the mind when one tries to understand psycho- 

 logical terminology is most embarrassing. I gave up 

 the chase of the meanings of the words as shown in 

 literature and went direct to the source whence the 

 word arose. On that I settled the meanings for myself, 

 and I have never had to retrace my steps. There are 

 three words which occur continually and are used inter- 

 changeably by nearly all writers, just as if one had the 

 same meaning as the others. Therein the difficulty 

 arises, and not in the meanings of the words themselves. 

 The words are Personality, Individuality, Spirit. They 

 all refer to the human being. 



As I understand it. Personality conies from Persona^ 

 w-hich means a mask or covering, and is used in many 

 senses, such as Dramatis Persona, in which the actor 

 is disguised by his garb. In psychology or metaphysics 

 it would mean the body which covers the spirit or actor 

 beneath it. Individuality comes from Individuus, which 

 means that which cannot be divided. It cannot refer 

 to the body, for that can be divided into parts. It must 

 refer to something immaterial, and that something, 

 I think, is the mind, which is indivisible and one, and is 

 the result of the combination of the spirit and the body. 



Spirit comes from Spiro, which means breath or motion 

 or movement, and is immaterial also. It is the power 

 which makes all movement of the bod}', whether it be 

 conscious or involuntary. 



If these basic definitions are adhered to they will 

 explain the whole subject. In practical work I have 

 found them to be sufficient for general use ; that is, 

 I think, the best test that can be applied. So far as 

 " strictly scientific method of investigation " is con- 

 cerned, I would say that if by " scientific " is meant 

 " materialistic," it is impossible to give any proofs at 

 all, but if it means the seeking of truth, we can see at 

 once, in the case of the still-born child and the recently 

 deceased adult, that something has not been imparted 

 to the first and has departed from the second, and that 

 something cannot be called nothing, seeing that it is 

 the factor by which all movement and intelligence was 

 made manifest. 



The real difficulty has arisen from the determined 

 exclusion of the ethereal from the scientific mind. It is 

 often said by scientists that " where the supernatural 

 begins, science ends," but surely everything on earth is 

 natural, especially if it is alive. Spirit is natural and not 

 unnatural. IndividuaHty is natural, not unnatural or 

 supernatural. Whilst the idea persists that there is 

 something supernatural, so long will difficulty and stagna- 



tion exist. As soon as we realise that all that is on earth 

 is natural, the innumerable difficulties that e.xist to-day 

 will vanish. There is no dividing-line, for one seems to 

 overlap and to intermingle with the other, yet they are 

 separable — which is a paradox. 



Yours, etc., 

 S.\MUEL George. 

 Glack, 

 Deal. 

 September 27, 1922. 



Sir, 



ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES 



To the Editor of Discovery 



My letter in your last issue did not aim to give all 

 the evidence I have available on the points I mentioned. 

 Space forbade that, and my book on Early British Track- 

 ways was wTitten (probably with many faulty place- 

 name surmises) to explain and introduce this new frame- 

 work for investigation. 



As regards the Bowley place-names I mentioned. Canon 

 Bannister (Place-names of Herefordshire) gives this same 

 Bowley as being Bolelei in Domesday Book ; and there is 

 another ancient Bowley Lane in Herefordshire. Looking 

 up the bol or bole place-names, I went to BoUingham (no 

 old forms available) to find the bol, not recorded in map 

 or record. But there it was, a conical tumulus in a 

 shrubberv. cloje to chapel and house, with a summer- 

 house and a dovecot on its apex. I investigated Bolitree, 

 sometimes called a " castle" ; the house is raised a little 

 as if on a mound, and round it are traces of a moat. 



My deductions about the meaning of the " red," 

 " white," and other place-names have not started as a 

 theory, as critics assume. I was not thinking about 

 place-names at all until I found the straight tracks I 

 had discovered (sighted over moats, mounds, etc.) also 

 linked up in some cases place-names of one type. I 

 should have been glad if place-names could have been 

 kept out of the investigation altogether, but it was im- 

 possible, as they shout out to the investigator informa- 

 tion which he cannot ignore. 



Of course, the truth of what 1 pointed out all hangs 

 upon the question whether straight-sighted prehistoric 

 trackways really existed. I do not expect this to be fully 

 accepted until well confirmed ; and fortunately it is 

 already receiving full confirmation from other observers 

 — Mr. \V. A. Dutt, of Lowestoft, author of Highicays and 

 Byways in East Anglta, for an instance. 



Ought we not to recognise that a keen topographical 

 knowledge and insight is not always joined in the same 

 person with a skilled knowledge of words and their roots 

 in the scholar's sense ; and that, again, academic con- 

 clusions are often absurdly wrong for want of the special 

 knowledge of the place, as well as that of the name ? Here 

 co-operation might score. 



Yours, etc., 

 Alfred Watkins. 

 Hereford, 



November 3, 1922. 



[Owing to lack of space we have unavoidably had to hold 

 over to the January No. a most important letter from Prof. 

 Mawer in answer to the above letter.] 



