ABSTRACT
Personality, is an assumption which was early made, to account for all the events, external and internal, which arrested the attention of man and called for explanation. On the theory that animism is the earliest stage in the intellectual evolution of man, personal power was that in which man from the beginning sought the explanation of the events that befell him. On the pre-animistic theory, man at that stage of his history had not yet framed the conception, the fallacious conception of personality, or personal power. The theory may be said to be of philosophic value, because it accords with the philosophy which teaches that the uniformities of succession, are compatible only with the assumption of impersonal power. This chapter considers the pre-animistic theory in its relation to the question of Personality. The upholders of the pre-animistic theory avoid the manifest error of supposing that the concept of impersonal things could exist prior and independent of the concept of personality.
