VI FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 131 



the old elements end and the new begin. But beyond any [ 

 manner of doubt in the advance the new is there along' 

 with the old in such a way that we can only understand the 

 process, as a whole and its minutest detail, as a real creative/ 

 one. 



It may be argued that my view of organic creativeness 

 as meaning, not merely new grouping or structures but also 

 new character units and quality elements, brings us back 

 to that conception of absolute creation which I have already 

 declared to be unintelligible. Is it not better then, it may 

 be asked, to fall back on the idea of potentiality rather 

 than creativeness, and to conceive the organic advance as 

 the rendering actual what was implicit and potential in the 

 organism in the beginning? In this way new characters 

 which emerge in the course of organic descent would not 

 be taken as absolutely new, but as the appearance or emerg- 1 

 ence of potential characters which were there all along in 

 the ancestors of the new organism. My answer would be 

 that the concept of potentiality is quite useful but not 

 applicable here; the formation of the new is usually a very 

 long process which may occupy an indefinite number of 

 generations before its actual emergence in a new sensible 

 character or species. During this process of subsensible 

 growth or incubation the character may be fairly described 

 as potential in the ancestors of the new species. But to 

 go further and to say that the new is there in potential 

 form from the very beginning is to fall back into the pre-^ 

 formation view of Evolution which we have already in the 

 last chapter discarded as making a farce of all real organic 

 advance. Potentiality presupposes that the real creative 

 work is already done, and that the slow finishing touches 

 alone remain to be put on. We have simply to face the^ 

 facts of Nature frankly as we find them; and to my mind 

 there is no doubt, however hard it is to picture to ourselves 

 the underlying idea of creation, that the emergence of the 

 really new, in other words, the creativeness of the evolu- 

 tionary process, is the only view which is in harmony with 

 our scientific knowledge. Real creativeness is a funda- 



