… But only in a person does self-consciousness take place, and this is precisely the main sign of personality in a person. Man, like all living beings, fights for his being, adapts and adapts his environment to himself, is aware of what is around him, invents tools and subjugates the forces of nature. All this can be in other higher beings. But only in man there is self-consciousness — and not only in the sense that a man sees himself, but also in the fact that he discovers in himself an unexplored depth, finds a whole world in himself. Self-consciousness has as its object precisely this depth and inexhaustibility of life within man; and therefore self-consciousness is at the same time the consciousness of its unity, its "I", its originality, separateness. Here, too, the consciousness of one’s opposition to other people, the world, even God flares up: in the depths of oneself, a person finds not only an inner world, not only the same “I”, but also the power of opposition to everything that is not a person, the power of freedom. Here, some feature of the absoluteness of the "I" is revealed, in any case, some reflection of the Absolute, precisely in this possibility of opposing oneself to everything that is not "I".

However, this reflection of the Absolute is only a moment, a special feature of personality as it is revealed in us. From our depths the idea of freedom and the idea of self-affirmation are born, and the experience of life teaches us that we are limited on all sides. The beginning of personality does not unfold in us in the fullness of what is given to it; the beginning of personality in us is incomplete and limited, and here the first riddle arises in personality, which requires its inclusion in the system of the created world. How is this combination of creatureliness and personality possible in man? The fact that man is a created personality, in this there is a deep contradiction, a strange simultaneous belonging of man to the created world and the Absolute world. In essence, the concept of personality is completed for us precisely in the idea of the Absolute Personality, that is, in the idea of God¹ as a self-existing Being, not conditioned by anything and not arising from anything.