112 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



experience has to be recognised and eliminated. I have 

 already referred to Bergson's description of the intelligence 

 as a selective, discriminative, eliminative, limiting factor 

 in our experience of the world. But the trouble really goes 

 deeper than that. Not only our intellect but our senses 

 also show the same tendency and defects. All our senses are 

 definitely limited and reveal to us directly only a limited 

 narrow range of the properties of things. It is one of the 

 main tasks of Science to construct instruments which will 

 supplement the limitations of our senses. An object just 

 visible to the naked eye presents a very different appearance 

 when seen through a powerful microscope. The microscope, 

 the telescope, the spectroscope, micro-photography, the 

 X-ray spectrum with its revelation of the constitution of 

 the atom — all these and many more are devices to extend 

 our senses beyond their limited natural range. The com- 

 bined effect of our limited sensibility and the practical 

 selective character of our intelligence accounts in part for 

 the fact that things appear to us limited in size and form, 

 with definite contours and margins and surfaces beyond 

 which they do not go and come to a dead stop. This dead 

 stop is an illusion largely due to the defects of our natural 

 ^apparatus of observation. The activities which constitute 

 I the thing go beyond the sensible contours. The material 

 I part which we popularly call the thing is merely the con- 

 centrated sensible focus which discloses itself to our limited 

 sensibility and selective intelligence; beyond that it is the 

 dark 'Afield" which is formed by the activities and properties 

 of the thing beyond its sensible focal centre. We have seen 

 in Chapter III how the inner structure of matter results in 

 certain physical and chemical properties which constitute 

 its field. The field is as much an integral part of matter as 

 the sensible part which it surrounds. Anything coming 

 within that field will be affected by it; the field shows the 

 same properties as the thing. The field may be viewed either 

 as activities or as structure — as elements of force or as 

 curves. Indeed from many points of view structure and 

 function, curve and force are convertible terms for the pur- 



