Children are Born Persons - Charlotte Mason Principle #1

To understand the significance of this one must understand the distinction between these two categories, so confused by modern sociologists and philosophers, of the person and the individual. Here the first thing to note is that, unlike the individual, the person is not a quantitative category, in the sense that he or she can be numbered on an arithmetical basis and so form part of an impersonal total. The person is a qualitative category, one that derives from the possession of certain inner qualities. Thus the person has nothing to do with numbers and transcends and even abolishes arithmetical categories. The arithmetical law, for instance, according to which two individuals are twice one individual, does not apply to persons. The individual can form a part of a collectivity when added together with other individuals: he can be part of a group bound together in order to achieve some purpose. The person, on the other hand, is the ‘image of God’, a spiritual value, and so cannot be conscripted into a group or collectivity bound in this way to fulfill a common purpose. He cannot be a means to any end. He is his own purpose, his own end, and is unique. Every use of the person as a means to achieve some collective goal – even the most lofty collective goal – reduces him to an individual, an ego, and debases him from his status as the image of God. A relationship between persons consequently cannot be established through any outward bond or constitution. It can be established only through mutual recognition that each possesses and embodies the same inner qualities, an identical inner reality. It is this possession of inner qualities and of an identical inner reality which constitutes the basis of the relationship and the principle of unity between one person and another. – Philip Sherrard in Church, Papacy, and Schism