The Human Person

Man is a paradox; and his life is unceasing tension between contradictories. Of fallen man this is true in the sense explained by Plato's horses and St. Paul's 'the flesh lusteth against the spirit'; but it is true also In a yet more primitive sense: of the human per. sonality itself in its inner structure. Man is a paradox because, being one thing, body-spirit, he is at the same time two things. He is a social animal, dependent physically, economically, culturally, spiritually, upon society; he is a 'part of the universe,' often at the mercy of natural forces, often determined not only in his behaviour but in his very way of thought by environment, upbringing, the history of the race, the history of the world; against the might of the stars he is a puny invisible speck-it is not only the dead who areRoll'd round in earth's diurnal courseWith rocks, and stones, and trees.Yet at the same time there is in the infinitesimal speck a sort of infinity ; for the spirit of man is in Aristotle's phrase 'in a manner all things,' and for Christian theology it is capax Dei-made capable of union with the Infinite. This part of the universe is at the same time not part of the universe: the angels themselves cannot knbw a man's secret thoughts. The whirling-speck of dust is at the same time 'the most perfect thing in nature'; the servant of the social and cosmic machines is the master for whose benefit they are made, and the country he inhabits is, in Kant's phrase, the 'kingdom of ends.'The human person is traditionally defined as an individual self-subsistent substance of rational nature

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