4 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



present the concept of life is so indefinite and vague that, 

 although the Kingdom of life is fully recognised, its govern- 

 ment is placed under the rule of physical force or Mecha- 

 nism. Life is practically banished from its own domain, and 

 its throne is occupied by a usurper. Biology thus becomes a 

 subject province of physical science — the Kingdom of 

 Beauty, the free artistic plastic Kingdom of the universe, is 

 inappropriately placed under the iron rule of force. Mind 

 again, which is closest to us in experience, becomes farthest 

 from us in exact thought. The concepts in which we envisage 

 it are so vague and nebulous, compared with the hard and 

 rigid contours of our concepts of matter, that the two appear 

 poles asunder. Here too a reformed concept of mind might 

 bring it much closer to a reformed concept of matter. And 

 thus, out of the three at present utterly heterogeneous polar 

 concepts of matter, life and mind it might be possible to 

 develop concepts moulded more closely to fact and experi- 

 ence, freed of all adventitious and unnecessary elements of 

 separateness and disparity, and forming (as in all true 

 science they should rightly form) the co-operative elements 

 and aspects in a wider, truer conception of Reality. It may 

 be said that in making this demand for new concepts of mat- 

 ter, life and mind we are imposing an impossible task on 

 thought. We are asking it to go beyond itself and deal with 

 matters entirely beyond its own proper world. Matter, it 

 may be urged, is essentially outside and beyond thought, 

 something hard and impervious to thought, an object to 

 thought which thought can only just barely reach up to in its 

 utmost effort, and no more. Life is, of course, not alien to 

 thought in the same sense as matter, but still it also falls 

 outside the province of thought, it also has a reality of its 

 own beyond thought, and it also is an object to thought. How 

 then could thought embrace these provinces, how could it be 

 a measure of these provinces beyond its ken; how could the 

 part envisage the whole? Our standard of measurement is 

 inadequate, our task therefore impossible. 



The answer is that, while mind or thought may not have 

 made matter, it has undoubtedly assisted in making the 



