Personality: A Call to the Rising Generation

Personality arises only in an atmosphere where every individual enjoys complete freedom. By this I do not mean extremism and license, but the freedom that is accompanied by a feeling of responsibility toward society — the freedom of a person to believe what he wishes and to defend any social cause in which he sees good and benefit for himself and for others, thereby developing his personality and displaying his intelligence. Yet freedom in our country still lies in fetters: we dare not criticize any idea or deed, or cut a new path, lest we anger this man or that. The result is that we see great personalities among us only rarely. We spend our efforts in courtesy, in placating, and in warding off the anger of the keepers of the worn-out old. Free yourselves, young men and young women, for the age of world freedom has begun, and we see before us only the scattered remnants of the armies of oppression and enslavement. Separate persons from principles; support a principle you believe sound and fight another you believe corrupt, fearing neither Zayd nor Amr. Victory belongs to truth and to the good.

Personality arises and grows by the action of society, or the environment in which we are raised: the society of the home first, the society of play and of school, then the café, the club, and the office, then the newspaper we read and the radio we hear. All of these form the society that crystallizes our character and builds our personalities. I shall confine my remarks here to the home, the first of societies and the most powerful in effect. It is woman's field and the arena of her work — that lofty work which she holds sacred and to which she consecrates most of her life, in which she displays her art, her knowledge, and her ability. Yet she cannot play this part of hers in the best manner if she has not prepared herself, and has not been allowed to prepare herself, for it by modern scientific methods. Man forbade woman to rely on herself and to equal him in duties and rights, so her personality withered, grew feeble, and broke down; for personality grows only through the bearing of responsibilities, through dealing with people, and through experience. How can one who has been isolated from society, whose concern has been confined to cooking and procreation — how can such a one raise children with the upbringing this age demands? The age of the backward woman has passed, praise God. Yet I do not favor the extremist mannish woman; I detest her. I am an Eastern woman who considers the man the head of the house and the woman the pivot of that head, each completing the other. Therefore I demand the raising of woman's level in the East and the strengthening of her personality through balanced freedom and the facing of responsibilities of every kind. Then, and only then, can she raise her children in a home that forms in them a singular personality.

And as an Eastern woman I demand the abrogation of the old traditions from our homes, and I condemn the use of the stick, coercion, intimidation, and threat; but neither do I want anarchy in the home, where the children follow their whims without restraint. Both homes are bad for the formation of personality. What is needed is discipline without coercion, and freedom without license.

In the present age two forces pull at us: the force of cooperation and partnership, and the force of conflict and self-seizure. Personality grows in an atmosphere of cooperation, and it is degraded and stifled where conflict rests upon selfishness. For cooperation demands the qualities of peaceableness, love, and the desire for good, while conflict calls forth envy, hatred, and selfishness. Through cooperation our character rises and our horizon widens, and we pass out of the circle of the single family, the single village, and the single city into the wide world, taking it as a homeland for ourselves, concerning ourselves with its affairs, working and striving for its progress, fighting vice in it, and serving wherever service is needed. Thus our personality grows and rises; and this widening is what those whose personalities rose highest in the world attained. Goethe, the German philosopher who was born in 1749, had a life full of experiences and responsibilities, which led the historians to name him the man of the world, not the man of a single country. He concerned himself with what was in the heart of Africa as he concerned himself with what was in Germany itself; he studied Indian Buddhism as he studied the poetry of Byron; and he occupied himself with the affairs of the world and beyond. When he had reached eighty years of age, and Europe was speaking of three arteries of navigation — the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and the Danube–Rhine Canal — he said, in his old age and illness: “I wish I could live another fifty years, to see the erection of these great projects that bind the world together, bring the peoples closer, and strengthen the bonds of friendship among them.”

And permit me to say that this spirit of cooperation and breadth of mind is greatly lacking in us, and all our schools would do well to take care to plant it in their pupils, boys and girls alike. Children are by nature selfish in their childhood, and in this respect we are still children: we have not grown used to working with others and to public service, and we have not advanced by degrees from selfishness to altruism and cooperation.

It grieves us to see our young women and young men with the selfishness of childhood still clinging to them; they have not widened the narrow chain so as to go out with their minds and their feelings into the wide world. They peruse the newspapers and magazines to look at the pictures and learn the news of crimes and the tittle-tattle, or to read the serialized novels and stories; and some of them read nothing at all, but spend their time — or kill it — in the cafés and before the tables of games of chance. These have hollow personalities; they do not know how to converse on a public matter, and their minds have never been roused by any study concerning the homeland and the world. They have no financial, cultural, or social programs. How great is the difference between them and that advanced human being whose personality has been shaped by cooperation, who concerns himself with general world affairs, knows a great deal about the peasant and the worker and about political and social problems, and begrudges a single minute spent on trivialities.

Personality has its strengtheners, among them responsibility and among them culture. Let every mother accustom her son to bear responsibility and to feel it, particularly in his own affairs; let her accustom him to bear it alone, relying on himself; and let us bear it alone, as a people on the threshold of a new age. Let us not blame others in every matter, nor rely on others to solve our problems. Responsibility and misfortunes are those crushers that break the husk from us, so that the hand of reform may reach the kernel within us.

Culture, after responsibility, is among the strengtheners of personality. It is an inner polishing of the personality, acquired by reading, study, and mixing with people — not the reading of absurdities and trivialities which none would accept but those whose mental age does not exceed ten years, but the reading of books, articles, and newspapers that supply us with the political, social, and economic news by which the world changes every day, so that we ourselves may change and not remain frozen in a changing world. Development and change are the law of life and growth, and the growing personality does not accept stagnation, even were that stagnation perfection. Personality has also secondary supports which have their importance: among them the outward appearance, and among them ways of dealing with people, or what is called in English “manners.” The outward appearance affects people's feeling toward us and our feeling toward ourselves. And if dress does not change our view of Gandhi or Caesar or others whose personalities have risen so high as to be freed of the secondary accessories, still we are not all Caesar or Gandhi.

So every girl and every boy must attend to their dress and choose the clothes that suit them. Every person respects himself when he looks in the mirror and sees his clothes clean and orderly and his hair combed, and does not respect himself when he looks in the mirror and sees his hair disheveled and his clothes torn or dirty. This respect that the individual feels toward himself is what strengthens the personality in him.

Likewise ways of dealing, or “manners,” support our personality and adorn it; for personality is a vitality that shows itself in conversation, a winning and attractive appearance, a luminous smile, and a graceful word. Many prefer the possessor of an excellent personality to the possessor of superior intelligence, and the woman of excellent personality to the woman of splendid beauty.

So, young women and young men, study yourselves, your aptitudes, and your personality, and strive to raise it; for it will guarantee your arrival at success in your work and the building of your social position. Cooperate in working to raise the level of Lebanese society and to exalt the standing of this beloved homeland, laboring to create a future in which peace, cooperation, and love prevail.