*
For purveyors of the Prevailing View,
to be a self is the primal vice and to die
to self, in feeling, will, and intellect, is the final virtue.
*
It can only be the memory of such formulations
that calls up the unease
with which we find ‘selfness’ is still associated.
*
In contradistinction the favourable overtones of ‘personality’
seem also to be due to what has been claimed for the ‘persons’
of the Christian Trinity. Yet these persons have nothing in common
with the flesh-and-blood persons of our everyday lives except the
‘indwelling spirit’ with which we are supposed to indentify but
which we prefer to ignore in favour of our separate selfness.
*
We love our selfness and thus we give it the self-same
designation as the Divine Trinity.
