On the other hand there are people who produce no effect upon us
whatever. They come and go with a like indifference. They are as
unimportant psychically as if they were any other portion of the
furniture. They never stir us. We might live with them for fifty years
and be hardly able to tell, for any influence upon ourselves, whether
they existed or not. They remind us of that neutral drab which certain
religious sects assume to show their own irrelevancy to the world. They
are often most estimable folk, but they are no more capable of inspiring
a strong emotion than the other kind are incapable of doing so. And we
say the difference is due to the personality or want of personality of
the man. Now, in what does this so-called personality consist? Not in
bodily presence simply, for men quite destitute of it possess the
force in question; not in character only, for we often disapprove of a
character whose attraction we are powerless to resist; not in intellect
alone, for men more rational fail of stirring us as these unconsciously
do. In what, then? In life itself; not that modicum of it, indeed, which
suffices simply to keep the machine moving, but in the life principle,
the power which causes psychical change; which makes the individual
something distinct from all other individuals, a being capable of
proving sufficient, if need be, unto himself; which shows itself, in
short, as individuality. This is not a mere restatement of the case, for
individuality is an objective fact capable of being treated by physical
science. And as we know much more at present about physical facts than
we do of psychological problems, we may be able to arrive the sooner at
solution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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