THE INCARNATION only comes after centuries of study. It is, on the contrary, a distinction so obvious that the smallest child who can talk at all makes it automatically. If in the half-light he sees a vague outline that might be anything, he asks “What is that?” If, on the other hand, he can see that it is a human being, but cannot distinguish or does not recognize the features, he asks “Who is that?” The distinction between what and who is the distinction between nature and person. Of every man the two questions — what is he? and who is he? — can be answered. Every man, in other words, is both a nature and a person. Into my every action, nature and person enter. For instance I speak. I, the person, speak. But I am able to speak only because I am a man, because it is of my nature to speak. I discover that there are all sorts of things I can do : and all sorts of things I cannot do. My nature decides. I can think, speak, widk : these actions go with the nature of man, which I have. I cannot fly, for this goes with the nature of a bird, which I have not. My nature, then, decides what I can do: it may be thought of as settling the sphere of action possible to me. According to my nature, I can act: apart from it, I cannot. But my nature does not do these things — I, the person, do them. It is not my nature that speaks, walks, thinks: it is I, the person. A man may then be thought of as a person — who acts — and a nature — which decides the field in which he acts. In man there is simply one nature 47