i6 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



advance and its specific direction. From the point of view of 

 Evolution each of them must be looked upon as essentially 

 a real vera causa. This does not affect what I have already 

 said about the vagueness and unsatisfactoriness of their 

 present concepts and the necessity of looking for more defi- 

 nite and adequate concepts. All I mean to say is that 

 the things they stand for are real factors in nature and not 

 mere words or appearances. In the sequel an effort will be 

 made to give greater definiteness to these concepts, and to 

 determine the nature and character of the activity of these 

 factors. Here it must suffice to emphasise that the nature 

 of Evolution has been obscured by mechanistic conceptions, 

 and that erroneous views as to the character and operation 

 of causation have contributed to this misunderstanding. 

 And it may be useful, before concluding this introductory 

 chapter, to add a few remarks on this subject, to which I 

 have already briefly referred above. 



The science of the nineteenth century was like its philo- 

 sophy, its morals and its civilisation in general, distinguished 

 by a certain hardness, primness and precise limitation and 

 demarcation of ideas. Vagueness, indefinite and blurred 

 outlines, anything savouring of mysticism, was abhorrent to 

 that great age of limited exactitude. The rigid categories of 

 physics were applied to the indefinite and hazy phenomena 

 of life and mind. Concepts were in logic as well as in science 

 narrowed down to their most luminous points, and the rest 

 of their contents treated as non-existent. Situations were 

 not envisaged as a whole of clear and vague obscure ele- 

 ments alike, but were analysed merely into their clear, out- 

 standing, luminous points. A '' cause," for instance, was not 

 taken as a whole situation which at a certain stage insensibly 

 passes into another situation, called the effect. No, the 

 ^most outstanding feature in the first situation was isolated 

 and abstracted and treated as the cause of the most out- 

 standing and striking feature of the next situation, which 

 was called the effect. Everything between this cause and 

 this effect was blotted out, and the two sharp ideas or rather 

 situations of cause and effect were made to confront each 



