Personality and Liberty

Two rival passions are at work in men's hearts to-day, the cult of individuality and the cult of society. They give rise all too often to extravagant praise of liberty and to a no less extravagant insistence on discipline for society's sake. It is impossible to form a balanced idea of the functions of liberty and discipline, or of the right relation between the individual and his social environment, without having a clear view of the nature of personality and community. I offer a brief and dogmatic sketch of this subject. A personality is the product of the impact of the objective universe, past and present, on a particular experiencing subject. I do not wish to imply that a "subject" is necessarily a substance (in the philosophical sense) or a metaphysical ego, or an immortal soul. Whether such eternal individual spirits exist or not, I do not pretend to know. I do not even, by the word "subject," pledge myself to what Professor Broad has called a "centred theory" of the nature of mind, I do not know whether a mind is a system of experiences united in an enduring centre, as the spokes of a wheel are united in the hub; or whether it is a centreless "net" of experiences all related together in a special way. By "subject" I mean only "that which experiences," whatever the true philosophical account of it. I mean the seeming focus or centre of experience and action. This focus is in some sense located in time and space, in fact it is located within the organism. For my purpose the subject is simply that to which experience happens, and that which responds with conscious behaviour. I do not wish to raise the epistemological problem. I merely assume the rejection of solipsism, and the reality of an objective universe which the individual experiences, however imperfectly. Pure subjectivity is nothing but a completely featureless abstraction, a bare possibility of experience of some kind or other. It is through the intercourse of the subject with the objective universe that the subject assumes character and purpose. It "espouses" needs that are in principle objective to its own bare subjectivity. For instance it espouses the need of its own particular body for food, rest, sexual activity and so on. It is aware of its body as a going concern, and espouses its dynamic nature. It also espouses the dynamic needs of its own psychological self or person, its felt "me," which includes the need for fullness of personal life, for self-aggrandizement in a score of ways, such as intellection, constructiveness, self-respect