282 REV. PROF. A. CALDECOTT, D.LITT., D.D., ON 
primary character of mind is its selfhood: that it is unitary, 
and that it is centrally originative in thought, in action, aud in 
feeling, controlling the lower ranges in so far as these are in any 
way to be regarded as arising apart from the centre. In short, 
Philosophy and Religion both stand upon a belief in Personality. 
Here I need not do more than say that whilst here and there 
a trained philosopher may be found to recard mental life 
entirely as a process, or processes, of the naturalistic kind, the 
main line of philosophical tradition adopts the conception of 
Personality in something like the above sense. And it is plain 
that for religion a doctrine of Personality is indispensable if 
religion is to take high ground, to look out into a world beyond 
the world, to see eternal things in things of time, to cherish ideals 
of goodness, and to lift man into life with God. 
As to Heredity in personality, Philosophy can simply point 
to what she finds : explanation from deeper depths is impossible, 
for deeper depths there are not. At this centre of mental life 
every individual personality presents the appearance of being 
a new and fresh seif: this is so for the individual, and it is sv 
for the contemplator. We can find no way of conceiving how 
one personality can be related to another which may succeed it 
in time beyond the bare fact of succession. If there is 
Heredity we have no means of seeing how it could be effected : 
nothing corresponding to the germ-plasm and its reproductive 
processes is shown to us in the region of personality at its 
centre. Indeed, we may say that there is here no question of 
resemblances carried forward, for the fundamental character of 
every personality is the same. Each individual appears to 
emerge into being fresh from the Eternal Consciousness, says 
Philosophy ; fresh from the Divine Spirit, says Religion. 
What we have to note is the embodiment of personalities in 
physical frames, as the universal rule for man: and these | 
frames, as we have seen, succeed one another by the connection 
we call heredity: an analogy would be the equipment of a 
number of musicians with instruments partly of different partly 
of identical nature, so that their musical careers would be 
affected by the nature and quality of the instruments severally 
allotted to them: on this influence of heredity upon our 
complex nature all are agreed. But some of us would carry 
on the conception of the instrument of personality to include 
lower ranges of mental life making these dependent to some 
extent upon the bodily equipment into which the soul is born ; 
others regard these lower mental provesses as themselves 
affected by the way in which the higher consciousness operates 
