constructing organisms. A special set of functions will produce one
kind of organism, a different set another; and each of these will
express a peculiar variety of goodness. If, then, into the
construction of a person conditions enter which are not found in the
making of things, these conditions will render personal goodness to
some extent unlike the goodness of everything else.

Now I suppose that in the contacts of life we all feel a marked
difference between persons and things. We know a person when we see
him, and are quite sure he is not a thing. Yet if we were called on to
say precisely what it is we know, and how we know it, we should find
ourselves in some difficulty. No doubt we usually recognize a human
being by his form and motions, but we assume that certain inner traits
regularly attend these outward matters, and that in these traits the
real ground of difference between person and thing is to be found. How
many such distinguishing differences exist? Obviously a multitude; but
these are, I believe, merely various manifestations of a few
fundamental characteristics. Probably all can be reduced to four,--
they are self-consciousness, self-direction, self-development, and
self-sacrifice. Wherever these four traits are found, we feel at once
that the being who has them is a person. Whatever creature lacks them
is but a thing, and requires no personal attention. I might say more.
These four are so likely to go together that the appearance of one
gives confidence of the rest. If, for example, we discover a being
sacrificing itself for another, even though we have not previously
thought of it as a person, it will so stir sympathy that we shall see
in it a likeness to our own kind. Or, finding a creature capable of
steering itself, of deciding what its ends shall be, and adjusting its
many powers to reach them, we cannot help feeling that there is much
in such a being like ourselves, and we are consequently indisposed to