X PERSONALITY AS A WHOLE 263 



To begin with, the lives for such holistic study should be care- 

 fully selected, and suggestions are made on this point. The dis- 

 cipline of Personology may thus lead to the solution of some of 

 the oldest and hardest questions that have troubled the heart as 

 well as the head of man. 



We may begin this chapter by defining human Personality ' 

 roughly in the language which we have adopted throughout 

 the preceding discussion. Personality then is a new whole, 

 is the highest and completest of all wholes, is the most 

 recent conspicuous mutation in the evolution of Holism, 

 is a creative synthesis in which the earlier series of material, 

 organic and psychical wholes are incorporated with a fresh 

 accession or emergence of Holism, and thus a new unique 

 whole of a higher order than any of its predecessors arises. 

 In Personality we reach the latest and highest phase of Hol- 

 ism and therefore the culminating problem, which all the 

 preceding discussion has led up to. Personality is the su- 

 preme embodiment of Holism both in its individual and its 

 universal tendencies. It is the final synthesis of all the 

 operative factors in the universe into unitary wholes, and 

 both in its unity and its complexity it constitutes the great 

 riddle of the universe. Best known of all subjects of knowl- 

 edge and experience, nearest to us in all kinships and rela- 

 tionships, our very foundation and constitution, self of our 

 very selves, it is yet the great mystery, the most elusive 

 phantom in the whole range of knowledge. No wonder 

 that some go the length even of denying its existence, and 

 look upon it as a veritable phantasm of the mind. And 

 yet it is the most real of all reals, the latest and fullest 

 expression of the supreme reality,^ which gives reality to 

 all other reals. Its uniqueness and its incomparability 

 make it very difficult of approach by the usual methods of 

 scientific procedure, and hence it has been avoided by 

 science completely, and by psychology and philosophy to 

 a very large extent. Perhaps our way of approach to it 

 is a more hopeful one. At any rate our procedure will 

 remove the impression that it is a unique and isolated 

 phenomenon, something alone and by itself, a sort of Mel- 



