Consciousness is not attendant on every act of the person, much less is self-consciousness, although both are always potential and more or less implicit.  A person is often so absorbed in thought or act as to be wholly unconscious of his thinking or acting; the consciousness is, so to speak, submerged for the time being.  Self-consciousness implies considerable progress in reflection on one’s own states of mind, and in the attainment of the consciousness of one’s own individuality.  It is the result of introspection.  Self-consciousness, however, does not constitute one’s identity; it merely recognizes it.

The foundation for a correct conception of the term “personality” rests on the conception of the term “soul” or “spirit.”  In my judgment, each human being is to be conceived as being a separate “soul,” endowed by its very nature with definite capacities or qualities or attributes which we describe as mental, emotional, and volitional, having powers of consciousness more or less developed according to the social evolution of the race, the age of the individual, his individual environment, and depending also on the amount of education he may have received.  The possession of a soul endowed with these qualities constitutes a person; their possession in marked measure constitutes developed personality, and in defective measure, undeveloped personality.

The unique character of a “person” is that he combines perfect separateness with the possibility and more or less of the actuality of perfect universality.  A “person” is in a true sense a universal, an infinite being.  He is thus through the constitution of his psychic nature a thinking, feeling, and willing being.  Through his intellect and in proportion to his knowledge he becomes united with the whole objective universe; through his feelings he may become united in sympathy and love with all sentient creation, and even with God himself, the center and source of all being; through his active will he is increasingly creator of his environment.  Man is thus in a true sense creating the conditions which make him to be what he is.  Thus in no figurative sense, but literally and actually, man is in the process of creating himself.  He is realizing the latent and hitherto unsuspected potentialities of his nature.  He is creating a world in which to express himself; and this he does by expressing himself.  In proportion as man advances, making explicit what is implicit in his inner nature, is he said to grow in personality.  A man thus both possesses personality and grows in personality.  He could not grow in it did he not already actually possess it.  In such growth both elements of his being, the individual and the universal, develop simultaneously.  A person of inferior personal development is at once less individual and less universal.  This is a matter, however, not of endowment but of development.  We thus distinguish between the original personal endowment, which we may call intrinsic or inherent personality, and the