Homo versus Vir

When I was studying Latin in high school—I later added two more years in college to those four—I learned that the language had two words for man, homo and vir. The first meant generic male, the second a virtuous one. As can be seen, the concept of virtue is literally incorporated into vir. To be sure, the distinction was sometimes based on class rather than behavior, as in being a gentleman versus an everyday man on the street. Other languages make a similar distinction, though not always so gender-specific. 

​In Indonesian, for example, the generic human being is called orang, one of the few words from that language to have been borrowed by English for the animal native to Indonesia, “orangutan(g),” literally jungle (utan) person (orang). The other, more elevated term, from Sanskrit rather than Malay, is manusia, from manu and swa, or container and true self, respectively. Among its other distinctions, Indonesia is the largest mainly-Muslim country in the world, with approximately 80% of its 281 million people (2023) followers of Islam. So it is not surprising that Arabic makes a similar distinction between insan for an ordinary human being and insan-al-kamil for one of noble character. In English, alas, we make no such distinction: there is simply “human being” and perhaps “special human being” or “ordinary human being” and “saint,” although when my late mother wanted to describe an individual, usually a man, whom she considered outstanding, she would say, “He’s a real prince!” In English literature (my academic field), the 18th-century British novelist Henry Fielding created such a character in his novel Tom Jones, a certain Squire Alworthy, whose titled name indicated both his elevated social standing as a land-owner and his noble character. And more recently Lord Grantham in Julian Fellows’ Downton Abbey exemplifies nobility of both social standing and character.

Why am I giving you this tour of linguistic distinctions? Well, just to tee up my argument that although all of us are born as human beings, we have the possibility of becoming an exemplary member of the race. I’m not referring here to social standing, possessions, wealth, or power, or even how nicely we are able to turn ourselves out. No. I mean our self-development, perhaps best described by the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff (d. 1949) as the movement from “personality” to “essence.” In his terms, personality is a version of ourselves based on parenting, education, peer pressure, culture, and other outside influences. Essence by contrast is a public self based on who we really are inside or, in religious terms, the self our Creator designed us to be. In other words, we become persons with no distinction between our public and private selves. I would further argue that our primary mission in life is to grow into what I call our B & B selves, that is our biggest and best selves so that, in the famous words from Hamlet each of us can “to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man” (Act I, Scene 3).
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Achieving this transformation cannot be easy. But I believe that rather than wealth, power, or fame, this is the true pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that each of us should spend our lives seeking. May we make it so.

The mystic George Gurdjieff.