io8 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



Holism. Holism in all its endless forms is the principle 



which works up the raw material or unorganised energy 



units of the world, utilises, assimilates and organises them, 



endows them with specific structure and character and 



individuality, and finally with personality, and creates 



beauty and truth and value from them. And it does all 



this through a definite method of whole-making, which it 



i pursues with ever-increasing intensity from the beginning 



to the end, through things and plants and beasts and men. 



Thus it is that a scale of wholes forms the ladder of Evolu- 



\ tion. It is through a continuous and universal process of 



whole-making that reality rises step by step, until from the 



^ poor empty, worthless stuff of its humble beginnings it 



builds the spiritual world beyond our greatest dreams. 



The concept of the whole as a means of tracing the evolu- 

 tion of reality has several advantages. In the first place, 

 as the whole is at once both structural and expressive of an 

 inner general principle or tendency, its concept is as it were 

 a working model of the natural wholes we find in the uni- 

 verse, and is as near as we could get to that concrete char- 

 acter of reality to which we should have the closest regard. 

 The concept of Holism and the whole is as nearly as possible 

 a replica of Nature's observed process, and its application 

 will prevent us from appearing to run the stuff of reality 

 into a mould alien to Nature. It will, therefore, enable us 

 to explain Nature from herself, so to say, and by her own 

 standards. In this way justice can be done to the concrete 

 character of natural phenomena. 

 ] In the second place the fundamental concept of Holism 

 I will bring us nearer to that unitary or mpnistic conception 

 I of the universe which is the immanent ideal of all scientific 

 I and philosophic explanation. At the same time it will 

 enable us to bridge the chasms and to resolve the antin- 

 omies which divide the concepts of matter, life and mind 

 inter se. Their absolute separateness as concepts is over- 

 come and their actual overlapping (in the way we have seen) 

 is explained, by viewing them as phases of the development 

 of a more fundamental activity in the universe. The concept 



