“I think it can be shown that the discovery of personality is just a matter of realizing one’s proper relationships.”
[This is from the first of a three-part series on “Personality,” by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, on January 18, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)]
“Who and what am I? An animal that has been trained by ages of culture and restraint to observe certain social usages imposed upon me by contemporaneous society? An animal that has learned to eat with a fork and sit on a chair — and refrain from snatching food out of others’ hands?
“Well, if I am that, I had better buy the book on ‘personality’ [see the previous post] and learn a few more tricks of pose, gesture, stride, and the proper way to ask for a raise. But once I become convinced that I am considerably more than a trained animal — nothing else or less than a child of God, stamped with an image divine — then a new field of conquest and opportunity opens which has no barriers or limits except such as I raise myself.”
Paraphrasing I John 3:2, Douglas continues: “Sons of God — and while it doth not yet appear what we shall be, we know that when He shall have become clearly manifest to us, we shall be like Him. Now, a man who believes that, with all his heart, simply cannot think of himself in terms of deprecation.
“I am conscious that you are saying, ‘Oh yes, theoretically that is all very well; but isn’t it a practical fact that some of the most attractive and effective ‘personalities’ in the world are possessed by persons who give but very little attention to their divine sonship?’ I freely admit this, if one is obliged to judge by outward seeming. Some very potent and pleasing ‘personalities’ are in the custody of certain men who, from all appearances, have no religious interests, tagged and labeled as such. But, if you will take the trouble to investigate, you will find, deeply imbedded in the early training of such characters, that which exalted the importance of a man to himself.
“Moreover, he judges of this matter superficially who refuses to predicate God-consciousness of a man merely because that man boasts no oral creed and has never subscribed to theological postulates. The point I am trying to make is: that no man can discover and develop his personality until he has first become convinced of the value and importance of his personality. He only sets out in search of it after he has determined that it is worth the quest.
“Therefore, I believe that this simple faith in God’s Divine Paternity of the human soul is the most stimulating thought that can be relied upon to motivate and energize the life of the individual.
“Now, the second step in the discovery and development of ‘personality’ is similar to the first, in that it, also, is a matter of relationships. This second step, indeed, is corollary to the first.
“So soon as a man decides that God is his Father, his relations with other men are automatically established on a basis of brotherhood. All men are his brothers. They are dissimilar as to minor points but possessed of a host of common interests and mutual ties.
“Just for example: one of the most coveted graces of character, in which ‘personality’ may be said to speak for itself strikingly, is an easy affability toward a stranger. Who does not envy the man who, in the first instant of meeting, is able to present himself with such cordiality that he at once inspires respect, confidence, and admiration?
“What is the secret of this? Well, your man greets the stranger as a brother, not with his guard up, bristling with suspicion and a ‘show-me’ air, but as if they two had a very great deal in common. And the stranger may remark to himself, ‘What a delightful personality that man possesses!’
“Why, to be sure he has. He didn’t have to consult a book on personality, either, under the chapter, ‘How to Greet a Stranger.’ For, having accepted the principle of universal brotherhood, he needed only to follow the natural inclinations of his heart in order to present himself attractively and with a cordiality that inspired respect and confidence.
“So long as he is subconsciously defending his own interests, mentally distrustful of the other, he cannot express ‘personality’ at all. And the book will not aid him while he persists in a self-centered state of mind.
“Let me cite a few cases in point. Much has been said about the hand-clasp and how it expresses ‘personality’ — and it does. A man extends you a limp, clammy, flabby, flaccid hand, and you shake it as much or as little as you think the case justifies, and put it down, saying to yourself, ‘He has no personality.’
“But suppose he really wants to achieve personality. How is he to be advised? Shall he be taught how to shake hands? Will that solve his problem? Let him be taught, then. Suppose the next time he meets you, he grips your fingers and pumps away like a congressman home on furlough. Do you say to yourself, ‘Ah, he has personality’? Not at all. Indeed, you are rather shocked at the incongruous. He is nobody in every respect except that he is able to give a fair imitation of a man of ‘personality’ when he shakes hands. He has been treated, by somebody, for a symptom. His disease rages on, unabated.
“What, after all, is his trouble? Well, he is living a centripetal life; other men are not his brothers; he is a thing apart, unrelated and unobligated. He has walled himself in, possibly not by a fixed resolution to do so, but he is walled in! He meets you. He puts out his hand for you to shake. He thinks he is conferring a favor upon you by letting you shake it. He isn’t especially interested. He knows that when you have shaken it all you care to, you will quit and then he can have it back. He notes your smile of salutation and observes that you are glad to meet him. He, too, is glad — not glad to meet you but glad that your meeting him has given you such obvious pleasure.
“Every conscious thought and subconscious inclination of his revolves around himself, describing a very little orbit because he is a very little man. Now, you can teach him how to shake hands, if you care to spend the time — just as you can teach a dog to shake hands — but you haven’t corrected his real difficulty. He has no ‘personality’; that is to say, he expresses no ‘personality’ until he discovers the relation he sustains to other people, by virtue of their all having a Father in common; or, lacking belief in a common Father, nevertheless resolves that he is closely related to all the rest of humankind.
“Take another case. Here is a man who is concerned only with his own line of work; makes wheelbarrows, we will say. Talks of nothing else. Doesn’t know anything else. Mention some other matter of human interest and the only effect it has on his imagination is to remind him of something connected with the production of wheelbarrows. Get him out of his wheelbarrow and he is helpless.
“What is to be advised in his case? Think you that it will solve this man’s problem to go to him in a spirit of undoubted candor and command him, in the name of society, to let up about his wheelbarrows? Oh, no; that will only deprive him of the power of speech.
“He is just spinning around himself, that is all. He can’t be anybody until he quits that; and the only thing that will stop his ingrowing ego is a brand-new appraisal of his fraternal relations to other men. He must become a brother or remain a clod. For him there is no middle ground.”
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 