analogous negation is a negation of a higher perfection, since it is the negation of their union with a more perfect nature. It has been argued, also, that to be a person is better than not to be a person; whence it would follow that personality is a perfection. On the other hand, negations are not perfections; hence personality cannot be a negation. To this we answer that the proposition, “to be a person is better than not to be a person,” can be understood in two different manners. It may mean that to have a nature which is capable of personality, and is naturally personal, is better than to have a nature incapable of personality; and in this sense the proposition is true, for it is certainly better to have the nature of man than the nature of an ox. This, however, would not show that personality is a positive formality. But the same proposition might be taken to mean that to have one’s natural personality is better than to exist without it, in consequence of hypostatic union with a higher being; and in this sense, which is the sense of the objection, the proposition is evidently false. For the whole perfection of the human person is the perfection of its nature; so that human personality, instead of being a new perfection, is only an exponent of the perfection and dignity of human nature, which is such that the same nature can naturally guide itself and control its actions. We therefore concede that human personality is a formality _of a perfect nature_, but we cannot admit that it is _a perfection_ of itself. If human personality were a perfection of human nature, we would be compelled to say that human nature is less perfect in Christ than in all other men; for, though the Eternal Word assumed the whole human nature, he did not assume that pretended perfection, human personality. But S. Paul assures us that Christ’s human nature “is like ours in all things, except sin.” We cannot therefore suppose that the human nature is less perfect in him than in other men; and this leads us to the conclusion that human personality is not a positive perfection. Some have pretended that the mystery of the Incarnation would become quite inexplicable if the human person were nothing more than the human nature left to itself. Their reason is that by the Incarnation the human nature is separated from the human person; which they deem to be impossible if the person is nothing else than the nature alone.