Two Types of Personality

by Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook

There are people whom God has made straight, whose character is quiet. And honest guidance and inner tranquility is their constant fate.

If they toil in Torah, in ethics and wisdom, they will rise to great levels, but they are at any rate people who are straightness, good and worthy.

The fate of these people is to be involved in areas of active deed or in wisdoms that involve deed. Their ethical aspect stands in inherent independence, on its own and in tranquility. It is possible that it will not rise to an elevated level—but neither will it descend to a lowly level.

But there is a second type of person, one who does not have tranquility.

Such people always stand in the balance—either to rise to the heights of heaven or to descend to the depths of the deeps.

These people need to rectify their spiritual individuality every day. When they choose for themselves the path that they need, they will rise ever higher, but if they abandon it, they are liable to fall and fall.

These are people who must be constantly involved in Torah and worship, in ethics and feelings of holiness. And heaven forbid that they turn aside to engage in this-worldly matters and in wisdoms involving deeds.

**

In the course of the generations in general, there are at times found generations whose general nature is of the first type—who are tranquil, with a fixed character. And their education should be similar to those individuals with a fixed nature.

But there are also generations with a wandering nature, whose spiritual income must be constant, with an on-going flow.

And sometimes we find that in some particular part a person or a generation has an aspect of tranquility, and in another part an aspect of movement.

And the leaders, those who are concerned for the good of the entirety, must to bring to heart how to educate the generation in regard to each part by itself.

Orot Hakodesh III, pp. 126-127