82 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



itself alone, and that it is part of a larger whole of life 

 towards the fulfilment of which its most fundamental 

 functions are directed. As an illustration of the co- 

 ordinated inter-relations of parts and whole in organism, 

 nothing can therefore be more significant and important 

 than the facts of organic reproduction. Here more than 

 anywhere else the importance of the whole as an operative 

 factor appears, not merely the immediate whole or individual 

 organism, but also the transcendent whole or the type 

 which has to be reproduced and maintained at all costs. 

 Throughout the entire range of organic nature one is 

 impressed with the essential selflessness, the disregard of 

 self, and the transcendence of self in the reproductive pro- 

 cess, which harnesses the individual to the purposes of the 

 race, exhausts its reserves of strength, and often costs it its 

 life. On that process is stamped, as on the very heart of 

 nature, the principle of sacrifice, of the subordination of 

 part to the whole, of the individual to the race or type. 



The preceding analysis will have enabled us to realise that 

 the plant or the animal is a whole consisting of millions 

 of parts in the form of cells of all kinds, while the cells again 

 are smaller wholes of indefinite complexity and marvellous 

 activities. All these parts are co-ordinated and arranged 

 down to the most minute details, and function with the 

 most complete collaboration in support of each other and 

 the whole organism. The organism is indeed a little living 

 world in which law and order reign, and in which every 

 part collaborates with every other part, and subserves the 

 common purposes of the whole, as a rule with the most per- 

 fect regularity. It is this perfect community of functions and 

 unity of action in a system consisting of innumerable parts 

 and the most complex structural arrangements that makes 

 the organism such a striking type of a whole. We have 

 seen structural order as the characteristic of inorganic mat- 

 ter; we now see active co-operation and unity of action super- 

 added as the characteristic of the organism. We admire the 

 order and co-operation of a beehive or a community of ants; 

 in the organism we see a more perfect order and a more 

 wonderful co-operation in a situation which is perhaps not 



