That one self has this effect on its fellows hints at a common essence pervading them all. It suggests one great impersonality of spirit underlying our several personal embodiments of it, a certain cosmic, communistic character for the soul. It is fortunate there is such mutual influence between men. Were it not so, this isolated globe would be a still more isolated spot; love would instantly fly out of the window, and friendship itself be put out of doors.
Minds differ greatly in their power of thus impregnating other minds. But it is especially a quality of the male mind as compared with the female one. The one is original and forceful; the other receptive and self-adapting. The one initiates, the other adopts.
Personality, or a man's mental force upon his fellows, is also in a way measure of the mental energy of the man.
For we meet personalities that repel us as well as ones that attract; personalities, even, that do not affect us beyond a recognition that they are, and that they do affect, our neighbors. We are, therefore, conscious of personality as such; in some sort, we even gauge its amount.
