XI FUNCTIONS AND IDEALS 299 



all this transformation from the disorganised atomic state 

 to the full realisation of unity in the personal character, the 

 Personality as the activity of Holism in the human individual 

 is itself the creative shaping agency which directs the move- 

 ment; it is the Personality v/hich not only develops all the 

 separate faculties of mind and soul, but concentrates 

 and finally unifies their activities; the various mental ele- 

 ments it organises and fuses into one luminous personal 

 whole, which in time exercises a restraining and overshadow- 

 ing power over all tendencies and impulses harmful to the 

 whole, and directs the entire current of being, thinking and 

 feeling to the realisation of the highest ethical and spiritual 

 ends. 



We have seen in earlier chapters how in case of mutilation 

 of an organism some central control often avails to restore or 

 repair the mutilated organ. In the same way the Person- 

 ality, as an activity of Holism in the individual, repairs any 

 breach in the personal character and restores the balance dis- 

 turbed by any impairment of character. The Personality! 

 appears as the self-healer, which through all obstacles and 

 impediments endeavours to preserve and realise its own type 

 or ideal, and often even from defeat and disaster itself to 

 wrest the accomplishment of the ethical ideal at which it is 

 consciously or unconsciously aiming. Not seldom, of course, 

 the Personality finds it impossible to overcome the defeats it 

 has sustained and goes under; for it is as yet weak and 

 inchoate as a function of Holism, and in some cases it is 

 weaker than in others. But the level of its power and 

 activity is gradually rising; more and more it is gathering 

 the unorganised centrifugal tendencies of the individual 

 into an effective central control, an J often it wins even in the 

 most discouraging circumstances those moral victories 

 which form the great landmarks of personal and human 

 progress. From the depths of moral and spiritual aberration 

 it guides the weak steps of the wanderer to conscious man- 

 hood and moral self-control. As the organism heals itself 

 after a mutilation, so the Personality through identically 

 the same functioning of Holism saves and purifies the per- 



