Editorial February 28, 1920 Issue

Individuality versus Personality

Ella W. Hoag

For ages men have longed for an understanding of individuality which they could express in their own lives. They have sought it in a multitude of ways. They have written tomes on the subject. They have undertaken to define it. They have even laid down positive rules for themselves and others as to the manner in which to attain and maintain it. To their astonishment, however, the most of their supposed wisdom in regard to this important question has seemed to go all awry when it came to attempting to put it into active practice. Because individuality has always to do with individuals, one would no sooner think he had the question solved perfectly, than some one would appear with a different solution, and away would go all the fancied practicality of his theory.

Now all this difficulty has resulted from the mistake of believing individuality and personality to be practically one and the same. Persons have expected to express individuality in their own corporeality and have considered it always more or less from the standpoint of material desires and material effects. Believing in matter as reality and power they have looked to it as the avenue of expression, and even when they have endeavored to lift their thought above matter to the contemplation of loftier purposes and pursuits, they have still regarded these higher aspirations as belonging to their own personality. Still mankind has continued to be heart-hungry for better things. Still it has wondered at its manifold longings for an individuality which it has gone on insisting must be expressed through personality.

Although Jesus understood perfectly the exact distinction between the two and taught it with as great clearness as the world was able at that time to receive,—as for instance, when he said, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven,"—it remained for the Comforter, divine Science, to reveal the final word on the subject. It is through the teachings of Christian Science that men are taught to divide between the materiality of personality and the spirituality of individuality. In the chapter entitled "Personality" (Retrospection and Introspection), Mrs. Eddy states it all so plainly and withal so simply that, if one will open his heart to it and obey its teachings, he need never again be perplexed over the distinction. She says there (p. 73): "Limitations are put off in proportion as the fleshly nature disappears and man is found in the reflection of Spirit. This great fact leads into profound depths. The material human concept grew beautifully less as I floated into more spiritual latitudes and purer realms of thought. From that hour personal corporeality became less to me than it is to people who fail to appreciate individual character. I endeavored to lift thought above physical personality, or selfhood in matter, to man's spiritual individuality in God,—in the true Mind, where sensible evil is lost in supersensible good. This is the only way whereby the false personality is laid off."

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