myself: "Come, let it be
done now," and as I said it, I was on the point of the resolve.
I all but did it, yet I did not do it. And I made another
effort, and almost succeeded, yet I did not reach it, and did
not grasp it, hesitating to die to death, and live to life; and
the evil to which I was so wonted held me more than the better
life I had not tried.

There could be no more perfect description of the divided will, when the
higher wishes lack just that last acuteness, that touch of explosive
intensity, of dynamogenic quality (to use the slang of the
psychologists), that enables them to burst their shell, and make
irruption efficaciously into life and quell the lower tendencies
forever.

6. Personality of Individuals and of Peoples[74]

In my opinion personality is not merely a unifying and directing
principle which controls thought and action, but one which, at the same
time, defines the relation of individuals to their fellows. The concept
of personality includes, in addition to inner unity and co-ordination of
the impulses, a definite attitude directed toward the outer world which
is determined by the manner in which the individual organizes his
external stimulations.

In this definition the objective aspect of personality is emphasized as
over against the subjective. We should not in psychological matters be
satisfied with subjective definitions. The mental life is not only a sum
of subjective experiences but manifests itself invariably also in a
definite series of objective expressions. These objective expressions
are the contributions which the personality makes to its external social
environment. More than that, only these objective expressions of
personality are accessible to external observation and they alone have
objective value.

According to Ribot, the real personality is an organism which is
represented at its highest in the brain. The brain embraces all our past
and the possibilities of our future. The individual character with all
its active and passive peculiarities, with all its antipathies, genius,
talents, stupidities, virtues, and vices, its inertia and its energy is
predetermined in the brain.

Personality, from the objective point of view, is the psychic individual
with all his original characters, an individual in free association with
his social _milieu_. Neither innate mental ability, nor creative energy,
nor what we call will, in and of themselves, c