INTEGRATIVE LEVELS 



tion we find that the sharp Hnes of distinction are only made all the 

 more sharp by the "mesoforms" which occur between them. Thus 

 between living and non-living matter the realm of the crystalline 

 represents the highest degree of organisation of which non-living 

 matter is capable. It approaches, moreover, quite closely to the realm 

 of the living in the phenomena presented by the so-called "liquid 

 crystals," states of matter intermediate between the random orientation 

 of a liquid and the almost absolute rigidity of the true crystal. These 

 "paracrystals," with their internal structure and their directional 

 properties, are closely related to living systems. Living systems, 

 indeed, almost certainly contain many components of a paracrystalline 

 nature. The viruses again, minute ultramicroscopic particles, probably 

 represent some kind of intermediate form between living and lifeless.^ 

 But these forms of existence, the more clearly we understand them, 

 will all the more clearly serve to bring out the essentially new elements 

 of higher order which characterise the form of organisation we call life. 

 Secondly, there follows from the developmental nature of social 

 organisation a conclusion which some thinkers, though otherwise 

 clear-minded, have not been so ready to see, namely, that we have no 

 reason to suppose that our present condition of civilisation is the 

 last masterpiece of universal organisation, the highest form of order 

 of which nature is capable. On the contrary, there are many grounds 

 for seeing in collectivism a form of organisation as much above the 

 maniere d'etre of middle-class nations as their form of order was 

 superior to that of primitive tribes. It would hardly be going too far 

 to say that the transition from economic individualism to the common 

 ownership of the world's productive resources by humanity is a 

 step similar in nature to the transition from lifeless proteins to the 

 living cell, or from primitive savagery to the first community, so 

 clear is the continuity between inorganic, biological, and social order. 

 Thus, on such a view, the future state of social justice is seen to be 

 no fantastic Utopia, no desperate hope, but a form of organisation 

 having the whole force of evolution behind it. But the acceptance of 

 this implies a certain revaluation of the idea of progress. The idea of 

 progress as applied to biological and social evolution fell into great 

 discredit as the result of Victorian optimism. It was pointed out that 

 evolution has often been regressive, that parasitism has been a wide- 

 spread phenomenon in biology, and that before speaking of progress 



'*■ See the papers by N. W. Pirie and others in the Hopkins Presentation Volume, 

 Perspectives in Biochemistry (Cambridge, 1937). 



