Essays and soliloquies

by Miguel de Unamuno

Before proceeding further in this review of Hume’s study of the psychology of the Spanish people, I should like to indicate a distinction which I am in the habit of making between individuality and personality, a distinction which appears to me to be of great importance.

All my readers know what is meant by “individual” or “indivisible,” a unity that is distinct from other unities and not divisible into unities analogous to it; and also what is meant by a person. The notion of person refers rather to the spiritual content, and that of individual to the containing limit. Great individuality, that which separates an individual strongly and emphatically from other analogous individuals, may have very little that is peculiar and personal to itself. It might even be said that individuality and personality are in a certain sense opposed to one another, although in another wider and more exact sense it may be said that they afford one another mutual support. Strong individuality is scarcely possible without a respectable dose of personality, neither is a strong and rich personality possible without a considerable degree of individuality to hold its various elements together; but the vigour of a vigorous individuality may very easily contain only the minimum of personality and the richness of a rich personality may be contained within the minimum of individuality.

I will endeavour, as is my wont, to make my meaning clearer by means of metaphors.

In gases, according to the physicists, the molecules are in a certain state of disassociation, moving rectilinearly in all directions—it is this which produces the phenomena of expansion—a state that is chaotic but not in reality very complex; and it is a well-known fact that very complex bodies are not as a rule found in a gaseous state, but only those that are simplest and least complicated. In solids, on the other hand, the molecules are ordered according to relatively fixed orbits and trajectories—especially in the case of crystals; and their individuality is maintained by a principle of intense cohesion, their surfaces being in direct contact with their environment, capable of affecting it and being affected by it. A middle term is presented by liquids. And thus we may compare certain strongly individualized natures with gases enclosed in a bottle or shell with rigid sides, while there are others, with flexible contours, in a free give-and-take contact with their environment, which possess great internal complexity—in other words, a high degree of personality.

Or we may compare the former with crustaceans, enclosed in hard shells which give them rigid and permanent forms, and the latter with vertebrates, which, since they carry their skeleton within themselves, are capable of considerable external modification.

Individuality refers rather to our external limits, it exhibits our finiteness; personality refers principally to our internal limits, or rather to our inward unlimitedness, it exhibits our infinitude.

All this is somewhat tenuous and perhaps fails to meet the demands of strict psychology, but it is enough if it has helped to make my meaning clearer.

My idea is that the Spaniard possesses, as a general rule, more individuality than personality; that the vigour with which he affirms himself before others and the energy with which he creates dogmas and locks himself up in them, do not correspond with any richness of inward spiritual content, which in his case rarely errs on the side of complexity.

In his preface Hume states that the Spaniards spring from an Afro-Semitic race, that “the keynote of this primitive racial character is overwhelming individuality,” and that to this root-cause is to be attributed all that we have accomplished in the world, our transient imperial greatness and our permanent tenacity. This feeling of individuality lies deep down in the root of the race and cunning politicians have turned it to the advantage of their ambitions.

In speaking of the Arab domination he says that “the Berber, like his far-away relative the Iberian, was a man of strong individuality, with an obstinate reluctance to obey another unless he spoke in the name of a supernatural entity.”