90 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



creativeness of matter is, as we saw, confined to the aspect 

 of structure and to the refashioning of new structures out of 

 the pre-existing material units: in that sense matter has 

 only a limited though real creativeness. When we come to 

 organisms we find a very much larger measure of creative- 

 ness in Evolution. For it is admitted that the new qualities 

 or characters which give rise to new varieties or species are 

 really new in the sense that they have not been there before 

 and are not mere reshufflings of characters which were there 

 before. New characters are created, and on the basis of 

 them new varietal or specific forms of a stable kind arise. 

 A still larger measure of creativeness applies to mind both 

 in its intellectual and in its ethical aspects; thought is cre- 

 ative in all its activities from the simplest sensation up to 

 the most complex judgment; and the ethical or practical 

 reason is creative of values, moral, spiritual and religious 

 1 values, in the fullest sense. Hence arises the view of Evolu- 

 tion as creative of the new, as an epigenesis instead of an 

 explication, as displaying novelty and initiative, as opening 

 up new paths and rendering possible new choices in the for- 

 ward march, as creating freedom for the future and in a very 

 real sense breaking the bondage of the past and its fixed 

 predeterminations. 



The view-point of creative Evolution is to-day embraced 

 by scientists and philosophers generally, and this consensus 

 between them in a matter of cardinal importance con- 

 stitutes a most promising situation for the future, and may 

 lead to far more fruitful co-operation between science and 

 philosophy than we have known for a hundred years. 

 Let me point to one important direction in which this 

 co-operation is called for. 



In their actual procedure philosophers have occupied 

 themselves with general principles, while scientists, except 

 in the domain of Mathematics pure and applied, mostly 

 occupy themselves with the investigation of concrete 

 things, bodies, organisms and the like. Scientists have 

 more and more buried themselves in details, exploring 

 facts to their minutest details, and looking to ever greater 



