I FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 21 



faithful to our experience of her. We do not want to 

 recreate Nature in our own image, and as far as possible we 

 wish to eliminate errors of observation or construction which 

 are due to us as observers. We do not wish to spread Nature 

 on a sort of Procrustes bed of our concepts and cut off here 

 and there what appears surplus or unnecessary or even non- 

 existent to our subjective standards. Our experience is 

 largely fluid and plastic, with little that is rigid and with 

 much that is indefinite about it. We should as far as 

 possible withstand the temptation to pour this plastic expe- 

 rience into the moulds of our hard and narrow precon- 

 ceived notions, and even at the risk of failing to explain 

 all that we experience we should be modest and loyal in 

 the handling of that experience. In that way a good deal 

 of what we have hitherto felt certain may once more 

 become uncertain; the solid and recognised landmarks may 

 once more become blurred or shifting; the stable results 

 of the nineteenth-century science may once more become 

 unstable and uncertain. But the way will be open for the 

 truer constructions of the future, and the foundations of 

 our future science will be more deeply and securely laid. 



In the following chapters a modest effort will be made to 

 apply the above ideas and principles to a new interpretation 

 of Nature, including, as it does. Matter, Life and Mind. 

 Matter, Life and Mind, so far from being discontinuous and 

 disparate, will appear as a more or less connected progres- 

 sive series of the same great Process. And this Process will 

 be shown to underlie and explain the characters of all three, 

 and to give to Evolution, tioth inorganic and organic, a fun- 

 damental continuity which it does not seem to possess ac- 

 cording to current scientific and philosophical ideas. 



