eveloped "personality." If it were, children
who have never been trained by cultivated mothers, but have been
allowed to have their own way regardless of the rights or desires of
others, are more highly developed in "personality" than the adult who
has, through a long life of self-discipline and religious devotion,
become regardless of his selfish interests and solicitous only for the
welfare of others. If the high development of altruism is equivalent
to the development of "impersonality," then those in the West who are
renowned for humanity and benevolence are "impersonal," while robbers
and murderers and all who are regardless of the welfare of others are
possessed of the most highly developed "personality." And it also
follows that highly developed altruistic benefactors of mankind are
such, after all, because they are _undeveloped_,--their minds are
relatively undifferentiated,--hence their fellow-feeling and kindly
acts. There is a story of some learned wit who met a half-drunken
boor; the latter plunged ahead, remarking, "I never get out of the way
of a fool"; to which the quick reply came, "I always do." According to
this argument based on self-assertive aggressiveness, the boor was the
man possessed of a strong personality, while the gentleman was
relatively "impersonal." If pure selfishness and aggressiveness are
the measure of personality, then are not many of the carnivorous
animals endowed with a very high degree of "personality"?

The truth is, a comprehensive and at the same time correct contrast
between the East and the West cannot be stated in terms of personality
and impersonality. They fail not only to take in all the facts, but
they fail to explain even the facts they take in. Such a contrast of
the East and the West can be stated only in the terms of communalism
and individualism. As we have already seen,[CU] every nation has to
pass through the communal stage, in order to become a nation at all.
The families and tribes of which it is composed need to become
consolidated in order to survive in the struggle for existence with
surrounding families, tribes, and nations. In this stage the
individual is of necessity sunk out of sight in the demands of the
community. This secures indeed a species of altruism, but of a
relatively low order. It is communal altruism which nature compels on
pain of extermination. This, however, is very different from the
altruism of a high religious experience and conscious e