294 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



whole which par excellence it is; and such a study should 

 lead to the formulation of the laws of the growth of this 

 unique whole, which would be not only of profound theoreti- 

 cal importance, but also of the greatest practical value. One 

 cannot read the lives of the great Personalities without 

 feeling that a vast field for first-class scientific and philo- 

 sophic research remains still unexplored, and that discoveries 

 of the highest importance await the student of Personology. 

 Here I shall confine myself to a few indications of the gen- 

 eral activity of Personality as a whole. 



As a whole, as the individualising power and activity of 

 Holism, the Personality is fundamentally an organ of self- 

 realisation. As in the case of the growing or mutilated 

 organism the whole manifests itself by bearing through all 

 obstructions and overcoming all obstacles in its efforts to 

 realise and complete itself or its type in each individual case, 

 so too the Personality has, as its central end, the straighten- 

 ing out of all difficulties and the elimination of all elements 

 which militate against the attainment of its own immanent 

 ideal. In essence the task is the same in both cases. But 

 there is this material difference in objective, that whereas in 

 the case of organism the end towards which the whole is 

 moving is the completion of the material structure and its 

 functions, in the case of Personality, on the other hand, the 

 end and object of the inner whole is the realisation of an in- 

 visible spiritual structure or character. The organism is still 

 mainly material, while the Personality is essentially an in- 

 ward ideal; but in both cases the shaping power of the 

 inner whole strives to realise its end, to eliminate what is 

 alien and adventitious, to conserve and develop what is 

 pure and relevant to its ideal, and so to reach perfection, of 

 visible outward structure and function in the one case, of 

 inward spiritual grace and unity in the other. 



From this it will be seen that apart from our bodies the 

 basis of that complex whole which we call the Personality 

 is our voluntary activity or the will; it is the active, self- 

 maintaining, self-realising power of the Personality in us 

 which underlies and directs and to a large extent condi- 



