282 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



or less concrete cage for the winged, elusive, and 

 hardly-retained creatures of abstract thought. 



So, too, the organization of the idea of God into a 

 form resembling a personality appears definitely to 

 have, at least with the majority of people belong- 

 ing to what we call 'Western civilization,' a real 

 value. 



Biologically, the essence of real personality is first 

 that it is organized, and secondly that on each of its 

 many faces it can, if I may put it metaphorically, 

 enter into action at a single point, but with its whole 

 content of energy available behind the point. In 

 other words, man as a personality can concentrate 

 his mind on one particular problem of one special 

 aspect of reality ; but he is able, if need be, to summon 

 up ever fresh reinforcements if he cannot carry the 

 position — more facts, other ways of thinking and 

 feeling, memories, reserves of will. In a properly 

 organized personality, it is possible to bring the whole 

 to bear upon any single object. 



Now when the idea which man makes for himself 

 of outer reality is organized after the same general 

 pattern as a personality, it too will be able to act in 

 this same sort of way. 



When man in perplexity interrogates the idea he 

 has of external reality, he is anxious to put his little 

 individual self in harmonious relation with the whole 

 of reality that he knows. Therefore he should 

 organize that reality as a whole, and in such a way 



