Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/548

 532 J. D. LOGAN : nature, provided the indeterminate manifold may be evolved ab intra. The energising principle, the principle initiating the process, must make for "somewhat". It is for the initiating principle to say that the potentiality shall become this or that. But potentiality is not characterised by pure indifference : it has a certain individuality or character of its own. It is the function of the active principle to make potentiality either this or that, but of the latter to say in what way it shall be this or that. This, I take it, is merely a restatement of the Aristotelian distinction between Persons and Things. 1 Our conception of the Moral Person involves, therefore, the existence in unity of the Self as Attuent 2 (potentiality) and of the Self as Rational (initiating principle). And the function of Personality, in its moral reference, is nicely ex- pressed for us in Prof. Laurie's formula, as the " realisation of Self (attuent) by Self (rational) ". 3 This formula presents to us a conception of the living Personality. Aristotle had said that " virtue conies neither by nature (va-iv),"* meaning thereby that virtue or character is an active construction by Will from materials indifferent to virtue or vice generally. Now while the attuent Self is one thing, and the active Self another, the " living" Personality is the act of functioning at the heart of morality, the active construction of Character from the plastic potentiality. Personality is not to be conceived as a principle or an entity, but as essentially an act, of conscious, deliberate, active identification of Self with good or evil. But this is no mere act. It is fundamentally constitutive. I am a "proper" Person when out of a given potentiality, inner and outer, Will creates a " character formed after the pattern of the heavenly beauty". And this is the problem of Will : which, however, would remain for ever a mere problem, were not this constitutive act at the same time dynamic. The whole significance of Life, Freedom, Responsibility, Individuality and Selfhood is bound up in my performing my proper function or lot, in the quality of the Will to Live. I will to be this or that, i.e., I consciously conceive this or that as my Ideal, and Personality becomes at once constitutive, dynamic, inevitable, I am named and known by that moment's feat. s 1 Aristotle, Eth. Nic.^ bk. ii. 2 S. S. Laurie. Ethica or the Ethics of Reason t cap. iv., p. 2O passim. 3 Laurie, op. cit., p. 19. 4 Ethic. Nic., in loco cit. sup. 5 E. Browning, " By the Fireside ".