12 2 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



concepts, and if these concepts are clear and definite, re- 

 sults can again be deduced from them which make them 

 most useful as counters of thought and explanation. The 

 generalised concepts of space and time as developed, not 

 so much by the philosophers as by the mathematicians, have 

 these qualities of clearness and definiteness which make 

 them specially fruitful for investigating the structure of 

 the physical world, as we have seen in the discussion of the 

 Theory of Relativity. And similarly the concept of the 

 whole, if clearly apprehended and firmly held, may be- 

 come a powerful means of exploring the intricate phe- 

 nomena of life and mind. The concept of the whole is a 

 generalised structure, an abstract schema, a framework 

 to be filled in in any particular case; and it is this struc- 

 tural or schematic character which brings it close to that 

 concrete character which distinguishes all natural objects 

 in the world of experience. For the sake of clearness let 

 us proceed to analyse the fundamental characters of a 

 whole as we see it exemplified in, say, a simple organism. 



A whole is a synthesis or unity of parts, so close that it 

 affects the activities and interactions of those parts, im- 

 presses on them a special character, and makes them differ- 

 ent from what they would have been in a combination de- 

 void of such unity or synthesis. That is the fundamental 

 element in the concept of the whole. It is a complex of 

 parts, but so close and intimate, so unified that the char- 

 acters and relations and activities of the parts are affected 

 and changed by the synthesis. The analogy of a physical 

 mixture and a chemical compound is very useful and in- 

 structive in this connection, and we have already seen that 

 in a real though limited sense a chemical compound is a 

 whole. A whole is not some tertium quid over and above 

 the parts which compose it; it is these parts in their in- 

 timate union and the new reactions and functions which 

 result from that union. It is a new structure of those 

 parts, with the altered activities and functions which flow 

 from this structure. The parts are not lost or destroyed in 

 the new structure into which they enter; the atoms or 



