PERSONALITY. The word person (Latin persona, "a mask," derived, according to Gaius Bassus, in Ausus Gellius, v. 7, from persono, "to sound through"), from being originally applied to a player's mask, came to signify the individual wearing it. Again, as one individual is distinguished from another more by the internal character than by the external traits of his nature, the term suffered a further transference of meaning, in being used in a sense synonymous with man, who is an intelligent, free, and responsible being. Person in this sense is distinguished from thing. Deity, considered as a creative cause and governing intelligence distinct from the universe, is a person. Personality is the idea of a person carried to its highest degree of generality. The essence of personality is generally supposed by philosophers to reside in the will.