C IIRRENT LITERAT URE.
PERSONALITY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLE.
An Essay on Personality as a Philosophical Principle. By the Rev. Wilfrid Richmond, M.A. (Edward Arnold. 108. Cd.)— This is a remarkably interesting work, dealing as it does with that most profound of subjects, the " abysmal deeps of personality," and yet dealing with it in a non-technical manner, so that readers who are repelled by philosophic jargon may follow its argument. Mr. Richmond's endeavour is, so to speak, to socialise personality, to show that it is built up out of world-experience, and that it is only realised through the interaction of faculties and capacities of personal life that reach their goal in fellowship or communion. The essay is, in short, directed against atomism or philosophic individualism. How does personality develop itself in this life P Through experience ; the facts of the world are appropriated by the human consciousness. While the sense of separateness grows, the sense of unity also grows. Wordsworth has treated this poetically, as in his "There was a boy, ye cliffs and islands of Winander," in which all the "solemn imagery" of the scenery passes into the boy's being. This process, initially unconscious, becomes increasingly conscious and spiritual as the great elements of family life, of friendship, of apprehension of divine things are experienced and taken up into the mind. Per- sonality is not an isolated fact, but is enlarged and developed by this constant impact of the varied world-forces on our being. We are a part, as Tennyson says in " Ulysses," of that which we behold, and that is a part of us. This may be said to be the general tendency of Mr. Richmond's argument. We think that the very genuine difficulty felt by many as to divine personality —the idea of a personal God seeming to hint at limitations incon- sistent with infinite will and knowledge—may be solved, or at least fairly met, by some such view as that taken in this essay. Personality is no hortus inclusus, but an expansive power ever growing through world-experience. To God, the infinite mind, all experience, past, present, and to come, is known, and thus the expansion, if we may say so, of the divine personality is infinite. The essential idea is that personality does not mean boundedness, but perpetual growth through interaction with Nature, with human institutions and friendships, and with the revelation of the Divine. That is a far more fruitful conception than is the philosophy of Individualism. It implies, of course, the reality of the external world. We thank Mr. Richmond for this stimu- lating and suggestive work.
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