XI FUNCTIONS AND IDEALS 293 



most central in ourselves as human beings, but also that 

 power of Holism which operates blindly as life and organic 

 control in organisms; nay, more, in it we behold the cul- 

 mination of that fundamental holistic motive power of the 

 universe, the beginnings of which lie far back, impersonal 

 and embedded in the inorganic order of Nature, but which 

 gradually disentangles and frees itself, until in the Self of 

 the human Personality it attains its highest measure of 

 freedom. The synthetic organising power of Holism, start- 

 ing from the darkest and feeblest beginnings and blindly 

 battling with all sorts of refractory situations in the course 

 of cosmic Evolution, gradually evolves and wins through 

 until at last it emerges in the Self with luminous and radiant 

 self-consciousness. Through the Self, which possesses the 

 power of conscious reflection and retrospection. Holism can 

 look back to its own early beginnings and review its own 

 progress throughout the course of organic and inorganic 

 Evolution. As Nature finally learns to read herself with the / 

 human eyes which are her own, so through the human Self 

 which is the highest and best it has yet come to. Holism may 

 gaze back to its beginnings and scrutinise what would other- 

 wise be dark and unintelligible for ever. And thus it is that 

 the worm of Personality comes to turn to the light of the 

 Whole, and presumes to view and discuss the Whole, of 

 which it forms itself but a part. 



As was pointed out in the last chapter, the procedure of 

 psychology is largely and necessarily analytical and cannot 

 therefore do justice to Personality in its unique wholeness. 

 For this a new discipline is required, which we have called 

 Personology, and whose task it would be to study Personality 

 as a whole and to trace the laws and phases of its develop- 

 ment in the individual life. Such a study would be of the 

 greatest interest from every point of view, as it would en- 

 visage Personality in its unique wholeness and unity, rather 

 than, in the way of psychology, as a series of separate ab- 

 stracted activities. Personology would study the Personal- 

 ity not as an abstraction or bundle of psychological abstrac- 

 tions, but rather as a vital organism, as the organic psychic 



