100 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



definite. Holism is a specific tendency, with a definite 

 character, and creative of all characters in the universe, and 

 thus fruitful of results and explanations in regard to the 

 whole course of cosmic development. 



It is possible that some may think I have pressed the 

 claims of Holism and the whole too far; that they are not 

 real operative factors, but only useful methodological con- 

 cepts or categories of research and explanation. There is no 

 doubt that the whole is a useful and powerful concept under 

 which to range the phenomena of life especially. But to 

 my mind there is clearly something more in the idea. The 

 whole as a real character is writ large on the face of Nature. 

 It is dominant in biology; it is everywhere noticeable in 

 the higher mental and spiritual developments; and science, 

 if it had not been so largely analytical and mechanical, 

 would long ago have seen and read it in inorganic 

 nature also. The whole as an operative factor requires 

 careful exploration. That there are wholes in Nature 

 seems to me incontestable. That they cover a very 

 much wider field than is generally thought and are of 

 fundamental significance is the view here presented. But the 

 idea of the whole is one of the neglected matters of science 

 and to a large extent of philosophy also. It is curious that, 

 while the general view-point of philosophy is necessarily 

 largely holistic, it has never made real use of the idea of the 

 whole. The idea runs indeed as a thread all through 

 philosophy, but mostly in a vague intangible way. The 

 only definite application of the idea has been made by the 

 Absolutists, who have applied the expression of "the whole" 

 to the all of existence, to the cosmic whole, to the tout 

 ensemble of the universe, considered as a unity or a being. 

 This particular use of the idea does not interest- us at 

 this stage of this inquiry. The great whole may be the 

 ultimate terminus, but it is not the line which we are follow- 

 ing. It is the small natural centres of wholeness which we 

 are going to study, and the principle of which they are the 

 expression. And I should have thought that the matter 

 would be of profound interest to philosophers and scientists 



