PERSON A.LITY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TILE "SPEOTATOR.1
SIR,—Four of us were sitting round the tea-table when I, having just been reading some of Dr. Moberly's discussions on personality, started the question—What makes a person ? I do not know that we arrived at any explanation, but the question drew out two experiences which seem worth noticing. L— said: "That reminds me that one day when I was a very small child, going upstairs it suddenly came to me that I was a person,— somebody different from every one else. Before that I had felt as if I belonged to everybody, and I remember the sort of elation it gave me to feel that I was myself, and even to move my arm as my very own. I was so young that I had to steady myself with my hand against the wall as I mounted the stairs."—" Oh," said S—, "had you that feeling too? I can remember the same when one day I felt that I was myself, and different from every one round me; but instead of being elated, I was quite terrified at the feeling of being alone, cut off from all around." G— and I, on the contrary, had to confess that we could not remember when the idea first came to us. I wonder if such a definite recollection of the birth of the idea of personality is at all common. The instances here given go rather to disprove Moberly's view that our idea of personality—of being ourselves—is an "instinct" or an "assumption." It is rather as distinct a presentation as the existence of anything external to us. It is curious that Lord Tennyson in the well-known verses of "In Memoriam" represents the infant as learning to distinguish, not between himself and other persons, but between himself and other things :— "The baby new to earth and sky, What time his tender'palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that 'this is I':
But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of I' and me: And finds am not what I see, And other than the things I touch."
But this is surely antecedent to the notion of personality.—I
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