3i6 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap, xi 



It would be a mistake to look upon the ideal of personal 

 holistic self-realisation as merely egoistic. No doubt in some 

 cases the subjective selfish features may predominate; but 

 earnest men will always find that to gain their life they must 

 lose it; that not in self but in the whole (including the self) 

 lies the only upward road to the sunlit summits. We 

 ■ mostly move in the channels worn by social usage or con- 

 I vention and are influenced by personal and social impulses 

 (^such as ambition, patriotism, love of money or power. But 

 Holism is deeper than any of these. The inner call of 

 Holism is to none of these things in themselves and for their 

 own sake, but to its own victory in the personal life ; to unity, 

 freedom and free plastic power for the Personality; to active 

 moral efficiency and the suppression of harmful elements 

 in the personal life: in a word, to the wholeness and 

 perfection of the Personality. The response to that call in 

 the personal life constitutes the great inner drama, the war- 

 fare in the Soul, which issues either in the attainment of 

 Wholeness and Freedom and membership in the immortal 

 Order of the Whole, or otherwise in defeat, enslavement and 

 death. 



