XI FUNCTIONS AND IDEALS 301 



disappear as an organism. Metabolism and assimilation are 

 indeed the fundamental activities of organic wholes. 



Now all this is, mutatis mutandis , even truer in relation to 

 the Personality. Any element of a foreign, alien or hostile 

 character introduced into the Personality creates internal 

 friction, clogs its working and may even end in completely 

 disorganising and disintegrating it. The Personality, like"* 

 the organism, is dependent for its continuance on a supply 

 of material, intellectual, social and such-like, from the eur 

 vironment. But this foreign material, unless properly 

 metabolised and assimilated by the Personality, may injure 

 it and even prove fatal to it. Just as organic assimilation 

 is essential to animal growth, so intellectual, moral and social 

 assimilation on the part of the Personality becomes the 

 central fact in its development and self-realisation. The 

 capacity for this assimilation varies greatly in individual 

 cases. A Goethe could absorb and assimilate all the science 

 and art and literature and take part in much of the practical 

 administrative activities of his time and place without 

 finding himself oppressed by a load which must have killed 

 a lesser man; he could, as he has described in the character 

 of Faust, gather up into himself not only all the knowledge 

 of his day, but all the richness and variety of experience 

 which makes his life one of the most interesting records in 

 the history of the world; he could drink of the deepest 

 fountains of passion and arise to the loftiest heights of ideal 

 aspiration — ^he could do all this and not only preserve his"^ 

 spiritual manhood unimpaired, but actually deepen andj 

 broaden and enrich it in every direction. He could assimi- ;| 

 late this vast mass of experience^ could make it all his 

 own, and make it all contribute to that splendour and 

 magnificence of self-realisation which has made him one of ^^ 

 the greatest among men. A lesser Personality would have 

 gone under; either could not have acquired so much knowl- 

 edge and experience, or could not have assimilated it, and 

 in the end would have become depersonalised, a merer 

 mechanical acquirer and hoarder at the cost of essentialjf' 

 unity and integrity. As soon as a person acquires either 



