I\ 



296 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



The great practical problem before the Personality is 

 thus to effectuate and preserve its wholeness through the 

 harmonising of its several activities, and the prevention 

 among them of any random discord or sedition, whereby one 

 or other might be enabled to assume ascendancy over the 

 rest and so prepare the way for the disintegration and de- 

 struction of the whole. In the Personality there is super- 

 added to the unconscious organic control a whole complex 

 machinery of conscious purposive action* which is intended 

 more effectively to maintain and increase this highly organ- 

 ised harmony in the developing individual. The machinery 

 of conscious purposive control becomes highly elaborate and 

 almost artificial. 



In fact the nature of the Personality is distinguished by 

 its departure from the processes of organic nature and an 

 approximation to the forms of action which are character- 

 istic of society. Just as in a well-organised society or state 

 there is a central legislative and executive authority which is 

 for certain purposes supreme over all individuals composing 

 that society or state, and controls their activities in certain 

 definite directions deemed necessary for the welfare of the 

 state, so the human Personality is distinguished by an even 

 more rigorous inner control and direction of the personal 

 actions to certain defined or definable ends. This is the 

 reason why Kant has called man a legislative being. He is 

 an inward kingdom or sovereignty, whose powers and ac- 

 tions are directed, not by some external agency, but by 

 an inner agency which is none other than the activity of the 

 personal whole itself. Much of this control and direction is 

 conscious will, but far more is unconscious and operates in 

 the subconscious field of the personal life, and it is only on 

 great occasions or crises that light comes suddenly to be 

 thrown on this inner leading in the personal life, and the 

 individual becomes conscious that he has been guided or led 

 along paths which were apparently not of his choosing, but 

 which nevertheless were the outcome of the mysterious inner 

 self-direction which distinguishes the Personality. The ideal 

 personality is he in whom this inner control is sufficiently 



