28o HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



still largely an unexplored territory, and but for the recent 

 pioneering work of the psycho-analysts would have been 

 almost entirely unknown. And yet it will be generally 

 admitted that this province of the subconscious is most 

 important, not only for mental science itself, but more 

 especially for the knowledge of the Personality in any 

 particular case. For most minds, perhaps for all minds, 

 the conscious area is small compared with the subconscious 

 area; and beyond the subconscious area is the probably 

 still larger organic or physiological area of the nervous, 

 digestive, endocrine and reproductive systems, which all 

 concern the Personality most vitally and closely. It is 

 evident that the present demarcation of areas between the 

 various sciences makes it difficult if not impossible to deal 

 adequately with so large and embracive a subject as Person- 

 ality. Personality is deserving of having a discipline to itself 

 which will not leave it merely in the position of having to 

 be dealt with in a haphazard and incidental way by a 

 number of other distinct disciplines. Hitherto, so far 

 from having a field of its own and being a study by itself, 

 it has been a sort of nondescript annex of psychology. But, 

 as we have seen, the province of psychology is much too 

 narrow and limited for the purpose of Personality; and 

 both its method and procedure as a scientific discipline 

 fail to do justice to the uniquely individual character of 

 the Personality. 



It has a third and no less serious drawback as a basis for 

 a discipline of the Personality. The procedure of psychology 

 is largely analytical; it involves an analysis of mental 

 functions and activities, and a detailed study of their several 

 lines of development; and in exceptional cases a perfunctory 

 effort is finally made to view mind or character as a whole. 

 But mostly the last part is either avoided altogether or 

 attempted in such a half-hearted manner as to be of com- 

 paratively slight value. Take, for instance, Professor 

 James Ward's Psychological Principles, which is not only a 

 standard work but embodies and expands what has become 

 the great classic in psychology in the English language. It 



