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Ego Through The Ages

“Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is its collective march. Progress advances, it makes the great human and earthly journey towards what is heavenly and divine…” (Hugo). It is human nature to progress, the desire to improve, to make advancements in personality and self-worth. When a person learns of a fault, their immediate aim is to reverse and correct it. This could be as simple as looking in a mirror to fix messy hair, but mirrors cannot reflect a person’s personality. What is it that gives a person the ability to consciously reflect upon their thoughts, attitude, and behavior? Ego is the most obvious answer. The meaning of ego has been distorted through the ages, since its origin. However, the general idea remains the same. Ego is a complex term, which contains several different meanings from the time it originated, to present day, where it consists of psychological as well as spiritual usages.
Ego first entered the English language in the early 1700’s, as a term involved in metaphysics. It was adopted from the Latin word ego, which translated into “I”, referring to the self. Metaphysics was a form of philosophy invented by Greek philosophers, including Aristotle, which analyzed the essence of things. It dealt with reality, and the perception of what was real and why it was so. It was important to have the term ego, because it incurred self reflection, which helped students of metaphysics to realize the essence of reality. While at its first insurgence from the Latin language into English use the translation was simply “I”, it became to be known later as “I myself” for added emphasis on its self-reflective meaning. For years ego kept its metaphysical meaning, unti psychology was born. A creation resulting from the mixture of human anatomy and biology, psychology was a study of the mind and its processes. It originated around 1860, and was specifically analyzed the way people think. Important to...