Who am I; What is my Person?

My person is 
my projection to the world of who I am.
the actor I am being, 
the man of my own making, 
A delusion within which 
I am ultimately trapped 
within the prison of my mind,
when I come to believe 
that the person I am being is 
who I am.


“The word person,

in its primitive and natural sense, 

signifies the mask with which actors, 

who played dramatic pieces

in Rome and Greece,

covered their heads. . . .”  

 

 “. . . These pieces

were played in public places,

and afterward in such vast amphitheaters, 

that it was impossible

for a man to make himself heard

by all the spectators. . . . 

 

“ . . . Recourse was had to art; 

the head of each actor 

was enveloped with a mask, 

the figure of which 

represented the part he was to play, 

and it was so contrived 

that the opening for the emission of his voice, 

made the sounds clearer,  

and more resounding, vox personabat: 

whence the name persona 

was given to the instrument or mask 

which facilitated the resounding of his voice. . . .”

 

“. . . The name persona  

was afterward applied to the part itself,

which the actor had undertaken to play,  

because the face of the mask was adapted to the age, 

and to the character of him who was considered as speaking, 

and sometimes it was his own portrait. 

In this last sense of personage, 

or of the part which an individual plays, 

that the word person is employed in jurisprudence, 

in opposition to the word man, homo.

 

“. . . When we speak of a person, 
we only consider the state of a man, 
the part he plays in society, abstractly, 
without considering the individual.” 

Toull. Dr. Civ. Francais, Liv. 1 n. 168;
1 Institutes of America Law, 57, John Bouvier.