t may be of so ordinary a kind that we are not conscious of it
without the effort of reflection. But when it is there it influences and
guides daily conduct. Such idealism passes beyond the sphere of law,
which provides only what is necessary for mutual protection and liberty
of just action. It falls short, on the other hand, in quality of the
dictates of what Kant called the Categorical Imperative that rules the
private and individual conscience, but that alone, an Imperative which
therefore gives insufficient guidance for ordinary and daily social
life. Yet the ideal of which I speak is not the less binding; and it is
recognized as so binding that the conduct of all good men conforms to
it.

C. PERSONALITY AND THE SOCIAL SELF

1. The Organism as Personality[69]

The organism and the brain, as its highest representation, constitute
the real personality, containing in itself all that we have been, and
the possibility of all that we shall be. The complete individual
character is inscribed there with all its active and passive aptitudes,
sympathies, and antipathies; its genius, talents, or stupidity; its
virtues, vices, torpor, or activity. Of all these, what emerges and
actually reaches consciousness is only a small item compared with what
remains buried below, albeit still active. Conscious personality is
always but a feeble portion of physical personality.

The unity of the ego, consequently, is not that of the one-entity of
spiritualists which is dispersed into multiple phenomena, but the
co-ordination of a certain number of incessantly renascent states,
having for their support the vague sense of our bodies. This unity does
not pass from above to below, but from below to above; the unity of the
ego is not an initial, but a terminal point.

Does there really exist a perfect unity? Evidently not in the strict,
mathematical sense. In a relative sense it is met with, rarely and
incidentally. In a clever marksman in the act of taking aim, or in a
skilled surgeon performing a difficult operation all is found to
converge, both physically and mentally. Still, let us take note of the
result: in these conditions the awareness of real personality
disappears; the conscious individual is reduced to an idea; whence it
would follow that perfect unity of consciousness and the awareness of
personality exclude each other. By a different course we again reach the
same conclusion; the ego is a co-ordination. It oscillates betwe