312 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



active power which secures the imperial legislative authority 

 of the Personality, not only over its own rebellious impulses 

 and tendencies, but even over the fleeting evanescent forms 

 of thought and experience. In the ideal Personality Liber- 

 tas and Imperium are identical. It is, in fact, the supreme 

 prize to be contended for in the striving of each human 

 being; and the extent of its inward realisation denotes the 

 measure of the victory attained. To be a free Personality 

 represents the highest achievement of which any human 

 being is capable. The Whole is free; and to realise whole- 

 ness or freedom (they are correlative expressions) in the 

 smaller whole of individual life not only represents the 

 highest of which the individual is capable, but expresses also 

 what is at once the deepest and the highest in the universal 

 movement of Holism. 



So much in regard to Freedom as the form and measure 

 of personal development. 



The problem of Purity is 'at bottom identical with that of 

 Freedom; they are both but aspects of Wholeness. But 

 while Freedom concerns the power of the Personality and 

 means strength as against weakness, Purity means the har- 

 mony of the Personality through the elimination of alien 

 elements and the co-ordination of all the personal tendencies 

 in one harmonious whole of the spirit. A pure, free, homo- 

 geneous spirit is the ideal of Personality, 



So long as disharmonies exist in the Personality and 

 conflicts arise between different tendencies in it, so long the 

 Personality will fall below its ideal of a pure homogeneous 

 Whole. That ideal will be attained only when in the prog- 

 ress of personal development harmony and internal peace 

 have been secured. It riiust not be supposed that the only 

 manner in which this peace is possible is by the elimination 

 or absorption of all the lower or earlier phases of personal 

 evolution and the survival of the later higher phases. The 

 Ideal Man will not be devoid of those passions and emo- 

 tions which ordinarily war against the higher tendencies and 

 aspirations of the Personality. But in the Ideal Man they 

 will not cause conflict by contending for a dominating posi- 



