Personality is individuality, existing in itself, but with a nature as its
ground.—_Coleridge._
Paley says: The seat of intellect is a person.
Lock says: Person stands for a thinking, intelligent being, that has
reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, ... which it
does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and as
it seems to me essential to it, it being impossible for any one to
perceive without perceiving that he does perceive.
Henry Taylor says: The quality of intelligence is essential in order to
person. That which is not intelligent we call a thing, and that which is
intelligent we call a person. By the word person we therefore mean a thing
or substance that is intelligent, or a conscious being; including in the
word the idea both of the substance and its properties together.
Oldfield says: Person is a subsisting substance or “_suppositum_,” endued
with reason as a man is, that is capable of religion.
Thompson says: Person as, applied to Deity, expresses the definite and
certain truth that God is a living being and not a dead material energy.
Jouffroy says: Personality, in jurisprudence, denotes the capacity of
rights and obligations which belong to an intelligent will.
A person is a being who is intelligent and free. Every spiritual and moral
agent, every cause which is in possession of responsibility and
consciousness, is a person.
Webster says: Person is an individual human being consisting of body and
soul. We apply the word to living beings possessed of a rational nature;
the body when dead is not called a person.
The Biblical ground nature of the word person is in these words: “What man
knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of man which is in him.”
Intelligence is an essential attribute of person, but it is not a property
of matter. If intelligence is a property of matter, then the distinction
between person and thing is of a necessity a distinction without a
difference. But no greater absurdity could possess the human mind for one
moment than the thought that intelligence is a property or quality of
matter. Nothing short of the fact expressed in Bible language that the
spirit of man is a gift from God, will account for the distinction between
person and thing. Man in his physical nature is enslaved to the laws of
physical nature in common with all organized things; is subject to the
laws that control matter. The law of organic existence is such that he can
not live without a continual supply of food, which the nutritive process
continually provides in order to make up for the wastage consequent upon
disintegration of parts. But there are impassible limits fixed to the
nutritive process by the most certain of all laws, viz: those of gravity
and chemical action. To abolish these laws would insure the destruction of
all organic existence, because it would be the abrogation of the essential
conditions of organized being. Yet it is true that when a certain point is
reached a change and dissolution of the molecules always takes place, and
this change is the sure introduction of death. Hence, nothing short of
union with God, through his own appointed means, by which he brings his
own omnipotence to bear for the purpose of controlling the essential
condition of organic existence, could ever be an antidote of death. Man in
his original innocence enjoyed such means in the fruit of the tree of
life. Being removed from this he dies by the essential laws of his
existence. So man in his physical nature is enslaved in common with all
things that are under the reign of physical laws. Yet he is a free
intelligence. He is conscious of his freedom. There is in his history an
abundance of evidence to demonstrate his freedom. There is also a
sufficient amount of evidence to demonstrate the slavery of his physical
nature. But why refer to evidence here? These are facts of consciousness.
Man’s personality is, in view of all that has been said, grounded upon his
mental or spiritual nature, which was always free, otherwise his identity
is lost forever in the grave. I have said, if the attributes of person are
properties of matter, there is no distinction between persons and things;
in such a case persons would be things and things would be persons. Here
it is easy to see that the materialistic philosophy upon the subject of
man’s identity changes the ground nature of personality, and destroys all
distinction between persons and things.