X PERSONALITY AS A WHOLE 273 



that there must be something more besides those elements, 

 something commonly called life which holds all those 

 elements together in a living unity. This '' something 

 more " we have identified as Holism, and we have explained 

 it as not something additional quantitatively, but as a 

 more refined and intimate structural relation of the elements 

 themselves. When, proceeding yet higher or deeper, we 

 reach psychic wholes, we become even more keenly aware 

 of the presence and unmistakable function, the free creative 

 activity of this holistic something. And when, finally, we 

 reach the level of personal wholes which include all these 

 earlier less complex holistic types, we find all explanations 

 of action, relation and interaction among the elements 

 futile and hopeless, which ignore this deeper relation, this 

 holistic setting, this active creative Holism which unites 

 all the elements into unique wholes. I believe that previous 

 attempts to state the relations of body and mind in the 

 human Personality have largely failed because the holistic 

 character of the Personality itself as the dominating factor^ 

 in the situation has been tacitly ignored. It is, however, 

 unnecessary to labour the point further in this connection, 

 as the whole trend of our argument in this work goes to 

 emphasise the importance of the holistic factor in all reality, 

 and a fortiori in the highest reality of which we are directly 

 conscious, viz. in our Personality. Any explanation which 

 leaves the Personality out of account in these matters is 

 simply like the play of Hamlet without the Prince of 

 Denmark. 



Let us now approach the same point from another angle. 

 What is the relation of this Personality to our inheritance 

 from our ancestors? The general principles of organic 

 descent were discussed in Chapter VIII, and an attempt 

 was there made to show the intimate activity of the holistic 

 factor in all organic Evolution. In the last chapter, again, 

 it was shown how psychic Evolution differed from organic 

 Evolution in general; and it was pointed out that the 

 difference was principally this, that while in organic Evolu- 

 tion more or less definite specific modes of reaction to 



