The first manifestation of overwhelming personality appears in Jesus,
and he created the religion of love. In him personality and love were
convertible forces, one might even say they were identical. He, first of
all, revealed their mysterious intimate connection, and clearly showed
that love can only be experienced by a distinct personality, because it
is an emanation of the soul and not a natural instinct.
It was, again, personality which, in the twelfth century, produced a new
force: spiritual love projected not only on God and nature, but also on
woman. Now only had personality acquired its true significance; it no
longer meant--as it did in the mature Greek world--the individual
separated from his environment, the individual with a conscious
beginning and a conscious end, but the principle of the synthesis, a
higher entity above the mere individual, the source of all values and
virtue.
Personality is the self-conscious, individual soul, producing out of its
own wealth the universal ideal values, and re-absorbing and assimilating
these ideal values in their higher form.
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