http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/5264956

The Secret of Personality: the problem of man's personal life as viewed in the light of an hypothesis of man's religious faith

"There are no more profound and difficult problems than those which concern the personal life of man. Indeed, it might successfully be argued that all other problems are in some sort largely included in the answers given to these problems. This is not true alone from the theoretical point of view, as affecting our conclusions touching all the fundamental issues of philosophy, religion, and the positive sciences. It is pre-eminently true as touching all the practical issues of life. What shall I think of myself, my origin, the meaning of my life, the values which it seeks to realize, and my destiny;--these are inquiries, than which no other lie so near to the vital interests of every man. And surely, at no other time in human history has the pressure of the inquiry into the secret of human personal life and the measurement of its fundamental and eternal values--if indeed it has any such--been more insistent and spiritually disturbing. All the advances of modern science and art, and all the recent increases in the material prosperity of the human race, as well as all the tenets of morality and religion, seemed only a short time ago to be enhancing the values, while deepening the mystery, of the personal life of the race and of the individual man. And yet, in the light of the most recent events, how awfully cheap does human life seem to have become; and how fatefully ruthless its destruction! The discussion of this great problem, as attempted by this little book, makes no claim for itself of an indisputable scientific certainty, or even of an effort to arrive at such certainty. It offers itself, the rather, as an earnest of those faiths of religion in which, as it seems to the author, a suggestion that gives to the intellect some light and to the heart much comfort may be found. That the suggestion is not contrary to, but is in conformity with, the truths of science and philosophy, as they bear most directly on this problem, the author firmly believes"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

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