V GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 87 



and becomes a new orientative, originative centre of reality. All 

 through this progressive series the character of wholeness deepens; 

 Holism is not only creative but self-creative, and its final struc- 

 tures are far more holistic than its initial structures. Natural 

 wholes are always composed of parts; in fact the whole is not 

 something additional to the parts, but is just the parts in their 

 synthesis, which may be physico-chemical or organic or psychical 

 or personal. As Holism is a process of creative synthesis, the re-f 

 suiting wholes are not static but dynamic, evolutionary, creative. 

 Hence Evolution has an ever-deepening inward spiritual holistic 

 character; and the wholes of Evolution and the evolutionary pro- 

 cess itself can only be understood in reference to this fundamental 

 character of wholeness. This is a universe of whole-making. The • 

 explanation of Nature can therefore not be purely mechanical; 

 and the mechanistic concept of Nature has its place and justifica- 

 tion only in the wider setting of Holism. In its organic applica- 

 tion, in particular, the ''whole" will be found a much more useful 

 term in science than "life," and will render the prevailing mecha- 

 nistic interpretation largely unnecessary. 



A natural whole has its "field," and the concept of fields will be 

 found most important in this connection also. Just as a "thing" 

 is really a synthesised "event" in the system of Relativity, so an 

 organism is really a unified, synthesised section of history, which 

 includes not only its present but much of its past and even its 

 future. An organism can only be explained by reference to its 

 past and its future as well as its present; the central structure is 

 not sufficient and literally has not enough in it to go round in 

 the way of explanation; the conception of the field therefore be- 

 comes necessary and will be found fruitful in biology and psychol- 

 ogy no less than in physics. 



In this chapter we approach the central problem of our 

 inquiry. In the preceding chapters we have seen the con- 

 cept of matter coming closer to the concept of life; we have 

 seen the concept of life, in the cell, and in organism, and in 

 Evolution generally, tending towards the concept of mind. 

 We have seen these three fundamental concepts, at first 

 apparently so utterly unlike and so far apart, approaching 

 each other and overflowing each other in the real structures 

 and evolution of the universe. The question now arises 

 whether there is not something still more fundamental in the 

 universe, something of which they are but the developing 

 forms and phases, something out of which they crystallise 



