

56 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



principles of the conservation of matter and energy have 

 effectively barred any such idea. Novelty, originativeness 

 and creativeness are quite inconsistent with the ordinary 

 point of view and the popular ideas of matter as well as the 

 more rigid mechanistic conceptions of science. Nobody, 

 however, could have followed the above exposition of 

 the structural character of matter without beginning to 

 appreciate that in its evolution or creation of the forms, 

 structures and types which characterise it from beginning 

 to end, matter or the physical element in the universe is in 

 a sense as truly creative as is organism or mind. The 

 '' values " of matter or the physical universe arise purely 

 from these structures and forms. If the stuff of matter or 

 energy or action were not definitely structural but diffuse 

 throughout space, the entropy of the universe would be abso- 

 lute, and its value for this cosmos from all points of view 

 would be nil. The efficiency, utility and beauty, in short 

 the values of matter, arise from the structures which are the 

 outcome and the expression of its own inherent activities. 

 In a very real sense the idea of value applies as truly and 

 effectively in the domain of the physical as in that 

 of the biological or the psychical. In both cases value is 

 a quality of the forms and combinations which are brought 

 about. Whether they are structures resulting from the 

 activities of matter, or works of art or genius resulting 

 from the activities of the mind, makes no real difference to 

 the application of the ideas of creativeness and value in either 

 case. Once we get rid of the notion of the world as consisting 

 of dead matter, into which activity has been introduced from 

 some external or alien source; once we come to look upon 

 matter not only as active, but as self-active, as active with its 

 own activities, as indeed nothing else but Action, our whole 

 conception of the physical order is revolutionised, and the 

 great barriers between the physical and the organic begin to 

 shrink and to shrivel. Organism has by its inner activities 

 and the influences of the environment evolved its own forms 

 and types, and this great life-process is still going on before 

 our eyes. As I have already suggested, a similar evolution 



