X PERSONALITY AS A WHOLE 285 



is uniquely individual and that this special individual char- 

 acter should not be ignored, it should study the biography of 

 noted personalities as expressions of the developing Person- 

 ality in each case. Such a study of personal biographies will 

 not only have the advantage of bringing out the individual 

 differences among personalities, instead of blurring all differ- 

 ences in a generalised composite picture of Personality. It 

 will have the further and quite priceless advantage of study- 

 ing personalities synthetically as living unities and wholes 

 rather than in the analytical manner of psychology and the 

 other human sciences. In biography we have to follow the 

 development of a person as a whole, as a living biological 

 psychical entity, and we are therefore in a position to correct 

 the one-sided abstract generalised results of the analytical 

 procedure of these sciences. The study of biographies as 

 examples of personal Holism, as examples of the develop- 

 ment of Personality, will lead to very interesting and impor- 

 tant results. 



In the first place, we shall thus get the materials for for- 

 mulating the laws of -personal evolution. In the second 

 place, these laws will form the foundation for a new science 

 of Biography which will take the place of the empirical un- 

 satisfactory patchwork affair which biography now mostly is. 

 In the third place, the gradual accumulation of biographical 

 facts and data bearing on personal evolution not only will 

 lead to the formulation of the laws of this evolution, but will 

 give the basis for a sound theory of Personality and a proper 

 science of Personology. Personology as the science of Per-*^ 

 sonality, as the synthetic science of Human Nature, will form 

 the crown of all the sciences and in turn become the basis of 

 a new Ethic, a new Metaphysic, and of a truer spiritual out- 1 

 look than we can possibly have in the ignorance and con- 

 fusions of our present state of knowledge. To my mind the 

 basis for all these great developments can only be laid in a 

 new biographical aim and method, which will give us the 

 facts which are vitally necessary for any sound scientific con- j 

 structions. 



The lives for this scientific study as examples of personal 



