New-York tribune., 1919-01-12


DR.. Ladd concludes his article on this
puzzllng maze OF personalities by answer
Ing the question which naturally arises:
What is it, after all, to be person."
Let us put our answer into several brief
and categorical statements, each one of
which, doubtless, will seem to REQUIRE vol
umes of illustration and defence. Every
personal life is Developments It is not
something created at once, or bestowed SUD
denly either as gift Of nature or from a
divine hand. 1t is rather q growth. a be-
coming, and in the truest sense an achieve
ment. lime is necessary for the unfolding
OF personality. One comes to it, as to o
priceless possession, or as to misuscd and
perhaps forfeited opportunity.
Again, personal life is matter Of many
degrees and endless variations. This fact
has already been insisted upon. But into
every personal life enter elements which,
may undergo, and some of which in every
case are pretty sure to undergo, abnormal
If not morbid development. Some of these
clements come from hercdity; some come
from environment and education; and some
arise from the mysterious depths of the
SELF considered as the active side and
source of personal life, as what we call
will Elements Of morbidity, elements of
sanity, exist and may flourish or be re-
pressed in every human individuality. Such
is the wealth of resources for veal or woe
of every individual who develops a genuine
personal life. Not much of a person. mo
man at ALL "a really great personality
these are some Of the popular ways of ex-
pressing this important truth
"ln no case, however, can the elements of
personal life be considered as merely pas
sive or static; they are conscious activities.
In no case can the development of personal
life be considered as having the nature of
a merely mechanical evolution; rather it il
always a history Of the use made of these
conscious activities as they progress tow
ard the realization Of an ideal, or revert
toward condition of degeneracy and final
decay. OF such conscious activities the
most prominent are four. The first is self
consciousness, or the awareness of being
self and SO something other and of higher
value than any individual thing; the second
is memory, which binds together into
unique kind of unity the different expert
ences and stages in the development of
self; the third is rational inference, or the
kind of knowledge which relates events and
= things to one another and to ones self un-
der the conceptions Of causation and of the
so-called reign Of law; the fourth Is self
control, which adds to the 4 am l. of self
consciousness, the conviction am what
make myself to be- Morbidity or sanity
may characterize all the forms of the con-
scious activities which belong essentially
to the development of personal life, and
which in some degree are the possession of
every human being who can lay legitimate
claim to the title of 'personaiity.'
at is the conceptions and emotions which
we vaguely group under the term rational
nature and which arc most distinctive in
the fields Of science, morality, art and re-
ligion, that set the goal and stimulate the
aspiration toward the ideal of personal de-
veIopment This ideal is nothing less or
lower than the perfect person. And the
practical exhortation which follows logical
ly from this ideal is that one should be
striving intellgently, consistently and with
unswerving constancy toward the goal In
such striving lies the secret of immortal
ity."