300 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



sonal character often even by means of the sins and ex- 

 cesses of which it has been guilty. Thus the Personality 

 realises itself by producing unity and wholeness in the 

 personal character; and when through its own weakness the 

 character is degraded and a course of conduct embarked 

 on which constitutes a denial of that fundamental tendency 

 and aspiration towards wholeness, the force of the Person- 

 ality in the individual is often strong enough to rescue the 

 individual and sometimes even through a more or less violent 

 crisis to convert him to sanity, self-respect and moral whole- 

 ness. The moral and spiritual implications of this fact lie 

 beyond the scope of this work. 



The aberrations of the individual from the ethical stand- 

 ard are due not only to the inner weakness of the personal 

 character but also to the influence of the environment. 

 From the consideration of the internal we therefore pass on 

 to discuss the external relations of Personality. And here 

 the first point to note is that in so far as the individual is at 

 the mercy of external circumstances and forces, the situation 

 is largely of a mechanical character. We have seen in 

 earlier chapters how such a mechanical situation is con- 

 verted into an organic one. The organism does not merely 

 passively receive the force, pressure or influence of the 

 environment; it appears not as a mere passive sufferer, but 

 as an active agent in the drama of existence. And it is 

 considered an organism only to the extent to which it exer- 

 cises this active function of assimilation or metabolism of 

 the material which it receives from the environment. So 

 far from being a mere channel or conduit pipe for transmit- 

 ting the inorganic forces and energies of Nature, it disin- 

 tegrates all the materials supplied to it, and transmutes them 

 into forms which are serviceable for its own organic pur- 

 poses, and then builds these materials so transmuted into 

 the stately type which it is its immanent end to realise. The 

 power of assimilation is essential to the organism; without 

 this power it would simply be flooded with its surroundings, 

 and instead of conquering the environment and victoriously 

 adjusting itself to its surroundings, it would be overcome and 



