CHAPTER X 



PERSONALITY AS A WHOLE 



Summary. — Personality is the latest and supreme whole which 

 has arisen in the holistic series of Evolution. It is a new structuie 

 built on the prior structures of matter, life and mind. The ten- 

 dency has been to look upon it as a unique and isolated phenom- 

 enon, without any genetic relations with the rest of the universe. 

 Our treatment, however, shows it to be one of a series, to be the 

 culminating phase of the great holistic movement in the universe. 



Mind is its most important and conspicuous constituent. But 

 the body is also very important and gives the intimate flavour of 

 humanity to Personality. The view which degrades the body as 

 unworthy of the Soul or Spirit is unnatural and owes its origin to 

 morbid religious sentiments. Science has come to the rescue of 

 the body and thereby rendered magnificent service to human 

 welfare. The ideal Personality only arises where Mind irradiates 

 Body and Body nourishes Mind, and the two are one in their 

 mutual transfigurement. 



The difficult question of the Body-and-Mind relation, already 

 referred to in Chapter VII, arises once more in connection with 

 Personality. As there pointed out, the root of the difficulty lies 

 in the separation of the elements of Body and Mind and their 

 hypostasis into independent entities. They are not independent 

 reals; disembodied Mind and disminded Body are both impossible 

 concepts, as either has meaning and function only in relation to 

 the other. The popular view of their relation as one of mutual 

 "interaction" is not correct, as Mind does not so much act on Body 

 as penetrate it, and thus act through or inside it. "Peraction" or 

 "intro-action" would be preferable to ^'interaction" as a descrip- 

 tion of the relation of Mind to Body. The extreme difficulty of 

 conceiving how two such disparate entities as Mind and Body 

 can influence each other has led to various theories of their inter- 

 relation, such as — that God is the medium and agent between 

 them (Berkeley and Geulincx) ; that their separate action is in- 

 wardly brought into accord by a Pre-established Harmony (Leib- 

 niz) ; that they are but two modes of action of the one underlying 

 Substance (Spinoza). The fact is that all these theories have an 

 element of truth; the real explanation being that Mind and Body 

 are elements in the whole of Personality; and that this whole is 



261 



