XI FUNCTIONS AND IDEALS 303 



and hostile influences. It cannot do this by cutting itself of? 

 from the environment on which it is dependent for the 

 material which it requires for its sustenance and self-realisa- 

 tion. It can do this only by, on the one hand, developing 

 and strengthening its power of assimilating and making an 

 integral part of itself all the materials which are necessary 

 for its requirements, and, on the other, rejecting all un-. 

 assimilated extraneous materials which come to it without \ 

 being incorporated into it as a whole. In other words, it 

 aims at efficiency and purity — the assimilation or making its 

 own of whatever is required for its self-development, and the 

 rejection of all influences or materials whioh are extraneous 

 to its wholeness, which would be alien and impure to that 

 wholeness. 



The term "purity" is here used in the same sense in 

 which the German ^'Reinheif' is often used, to indicate 

 the absence of matters or influences which are alien or non- 

 homogeneous or extraneous to the thing in question. A 

 thing is called pure when it is free from such alien or ex- 

 traneous or adventitious elements as are considered destruc- 

 tive of its integrity and simple transparency or homogeneity. 

 This seems to be the fundamental meaning of the term 

 "purity." Its moral meaning as freedom from vice, or 

 hygienic application as cleanliness or freedom from dirt are 

 essentially derivative. If an object is itself and nothing 

 but itself, without the adherence of any adventitious matter 

 foreign to it, it will be pure or clean in the fundamental 

 sense. If a person keeps out of his nature any warring orv 

 jarring elements or complications, keeps himself free of all 

 moral or spiritual entanglements, and is nothing but himself 

 — whole, simple, integral and sincere — ^he will also be pure ^ 

 in the vital holistic sense. The food which enters the or- 

 ganism as alien material is destroyed as such in the process 

 of metabolism and is assimilated as blood and other sub- 

 stances and goes to feed the organic system and to form an 

 essential part of it. And similarly the Personality through 

 perception, intuition, conception and emotion, etc., assimi- 

 lates the influences of its environment and works them up 



