V GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 95 



of the subjective and objective factors so intimate and un- 

 analysable that it is impossible to say how much of the result 

 is due to one factor and how much to the other. Structure 

 is as much objective as subjective in its psychological origin. 

 To put the forms, structures, the order of Nature to the 

 sole account of the Intellect or subjective factor in experi- 

 ence is most seriously misleading and is subjective Idealism 

 in its most dangerous form. As we have seen in the pre^ 

 ceding chapters, structure or something in the nature of 

 structure is inherent in the objective order of Nature, just 

 as we shall hereafter see that it is inherent in the orders of 

 life and mind. 



Where Bergson seems to me to have gone wrong is his 

 impoverishment of the creative principle by reducing it to 

 the bare empty form of Duration. In order after that false 

 step to set his Creation going it was inevitable that another 

 mistake should be made, and that a relatively subordinate 

 factor, like the Intellect, should be overloaded with im- 

 portance. Thus the Intellect, which is a sort of Machiavelli 

 or Mephistopheles in the Bergsonian system, has a role as- 

 signed to it which is accentuated both unduly and in a one- 

 sided manner. In order to understand Nature we have to 

 proceed more modestly and in closer touch with our ordinary 

 observation of her ways. 



Let me try to make my point clear by stating it in another 

 way. I wish to get as near as possible to what one might 

 call Nature's point of view in our explanation of her. To 

 understand Nature we must take one of her own units, and 

 not an abstract one of our own making. We must as it were 

 take a small sample section of Nature which will include as 

 one and indivisible both the element of activity or principle 

 and the element of structure or concreteness in her. Our con- 

 cept must correspond to such a section as our starting-point, 

 and we must then proceed to apply it as a sort of standard 

 with which to measure up the whole range of Evolution. 

 In this way we shall try to explain Nature by reference to 

 herself and her own standards, so to say, instead of by 

 reference to intellectual abstractions of our own devising. 



