ABSTRACT
IN our consideration of personality, it will be necessary to study the bodily and mental components which go to make up the whole, and it is very necessary to make quite clear how the synthesis from the simple to the complex takes place. As has been noted in the last Chapter, the statement that any complex process is nothing but such and such simpler components, into which it can be analysed, is neither accurate nor even plausible. The same difficulty applies to any synthetic conception, and one of the features of Darwinism which failed to bring conviction, was that evolutionary progress could emanate from nothing but infinitesimal variations. This original concept of evolution is no longer acceptable, and nature does not seem to proceed in that smooth course, but rather by a series of leaps and bounds. As Lloyd Morgan1 says, “The orderly sequence of evolution, historically viewed, appears to present from time to time, something genuinely new. Salient examples are afforded in the advent of life, in the advent of mind, and in the advent of reflective thought.” In the study of personality this conception of emergence is of great importance.
