And this is a subject on which there is inevitably a good deal of misunderstanding. And the misunderstanding will probably last so long as one set of writers flaunts over it that blessed word Personality as a holy, a sacrosanct thing, like the visionary cross with its inscription _In hoc signo vinces_: and as another set treats it as a mere fetish, under which is hidden nothing better than stock or stone, or a heap of old bones. Perhaps some concessions might well be made on both sides. And the first of them would be to try to come to some clearer understanding what the term in question means. And, on that point, if we follow the example of Aristotle and examine popular usage, to see if it can help us to any consistent use of the term, we shall find that by personal as opposed to real we mean something peculiarly attached to the individual, of which he cannot divest himself as of other outward things, though it also is an outward thing[1] The person in this narrowest sense means the body; and if the epithet is further extended it still expresses what is directly manipulated through the members of the living agent, and is more or less closely attached to it. Yet if it means the body, we must be careful to add that it is the body, regarded not as such but as the representative, the outward manifestation, the inseparable sign or symbol of a spirit, an intelligence and a will. The person is the visible or tangible phenomenon of something inward,--the phase or function by which an individual agent takes his place in the common world of human intercourse and interaction--his peculiar and definite part in the general or universal world and field.