V GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM iii 



whole as exemplified and operative in small natural centres 

 or empirical wholes such as we observe in Nature. I must 

 now add that by the whole I mean this whole plus its field, 

 its field not as something different and additional to it, but 

 as the continuation of it beyond the sensible contours of 

 experience. I have before drawn attention to the vital 

 importance of this concept, and I now proceed to explain 

 and emphasise this point more fully. 



Perhaps the most important contribution which the Theory 

 of Relativity has made to our understanding of reality is the 

 integration of time with our spatial conceptions of the 

 sensible world. We are too prone to look at things merely 

 in their spatial relations, to consider them merely as objects 

 in space. They are just as much events in time, coming 

 from the past, enduring through the present, and reaching 

 out into the future. As we have seen, they are not static 

 but dynamic in their inmost structure, they are moving and 

 active in Space-Time; and indeed their active energy is 

 their very essence, much more than the mere static spatial 

 appearance which they present to the observer. As merely 

 extended, spatial and external, objects are barren abstract 

 concepts and not the sections of concrete reality which we 

 know them to be. It is the time-factor that makes all the 

 difference; Time integrated with Space is active and creative, 

 and productive of reality. The sensible objects and things 

 of which we are aware in Nature are active energy systems 

 in Space-Time; they are events even more than objects 

 and things; they are concentrated centres of happening in 

 the physical sense just as, at a higher stage of evolution, we 

 find minds as active concentrated centres of experience. 

 To understand Nature properly it is essential that we should 

 habituate ourselves to look upon material bodies or things 

 literally as events, as centres of happening, and upon the 

 time element in them as being no less important than the 

 sensible space element. The limitation of objects or things 

 to their space relations or aspects obscures and distorts their 

 real character for us and has to be got rid of at all costs. 



The effect of another serious limiting factor in our sensible 



