V GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 97 



the rescuers reached the imprisoned in the long dark tunnel 

 of Nature? 



Again, in Chapter IV we found in the organism and even 

 in the cell a perfectly adjusted system of co-operation so 

 closely approaching the social in character, a complicated 

 system of controls so closely approaching the mental in 

 character, as once more to raise the question of mind on a 

 really extensive scale implicit in Nature. As we find life 

 on the one hand encroaching on the domain of matter, so 

 again we find mind encroaching far beyond its own proper 

 domain on that usually assigned to life. Is life implicit t 

 mind, mind asleep and almost waking? Is life latent in f 

 matter, and is Mind latent in life? 



What is the answer to these questions, and how have we 

 to conceive matter, life and mind to explain this overflow 

 into each other's domain? Is it possible to have a concept 

 which will embrace all these facts as phases of its own 

 creative development? Is it possible to develop the concept 

 of a principle which is successively physical, biological and 

 mental in its developing phases, in other words, of which 

 matter, life and mind are the manifestation? Is it possible 

 to have a fundamental concept of Evolution, of which 

 matter, life and mind would be the successive stages? 



This is the sort of question which naturally arises as a 

 result of the point which we have reached in our discussion. 

 And the answer which one ventures to bring forward must 

 have reference not only to fundamental principles, but also 

 to that requisite of concrete character which we have just 

 now seen to be essential in any solution which professes to 

 be true to nature. 



The last two chapters have not only raised the question 

 but prepared the way for the answer which will be given in 

 the sequel. We there saw that reality is not diffuse and 

 dispersive; on the contrary, it is aggregative, ordered, 

 structural. Both matter and life consist, in the atom and the 

 cell, of unit structures whose ordered grouping produces the 

 natural wholes which we call bodies or organisms. This 

 character or feature of "wholeness" which we found in the 



