GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

256
ETHICS
but partial accounts and worked up into a comprehensive
survey, they would still fail to constitute tht truth about a
man. And they would fail to do this, not because some
particular piece of information had been left out, or some
particular point of view forgotten for, it would be urged,
no TflnttfT how complete the collection ofscientific accounts
might be, the truth would still elude them but because
they would remain only a set of separate accounts of
different parts or aspects, and a man is more than the
different parts or aspects which are ingredients of him.
True knowledge of a man is not, in other words, the sum-
total of the complete and accurate accounts of all hjs
different aspects, even if those accounts could be made
exhaustive. True knowledge is, or at least includes, know-
ledge of the man as a whole. To know a man as a whole,
is to know him as a personality, for a personality is the
whole which, while it integrates all the parts and so
includes them within itself, is, nevertheless, something
over and above their sum. Now to know a man as a
personality, is to know hi in a manner of which science
takes no cognizance. It is to know him as an acquaintance,
and it is, for deeper knowledge, to love him as a friend.
The conclusion is that in the degree to which a man
may be considered to be more than the sum of his parts
or aspects, science is disabled from giving a full and
complete account of him. If, then, we are agreed that he
may rightly be so considered, we shall refuse to treat the
scientific account of him, which fokffl Kim to pieces flpd
then represents him as the resultant sum of the pieces, as
exhaustive. There is always, we shall insist, some factor
in a human being which escapes from the meshes of the
scientific net, and this is precisely the factor in respect of
which he is more than die sum of the parts or aspects
which the sciences study. It is also in virtue of this factor
that he is free.
Acts of Will as Acts of Creation. If this conclusion
is true of a man's personality, it will be true also of at