132 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



mental characteristic of holistic structure and action. It 

 necessarily means such integration of structures and activi- 

 ties as results in new characters not there before and which 

 cannot be reduced to pre-existing elements. Holistic action, 

 therefore, necessarily issues in real progress and creative 

 Evolution. 



There is no doubt that the concept of creativeness raises 

 a fundamental issue in respect both of reality and knowl- 

 edge. If there is this evolution or making not only of new 

 wholes or structures, but also of new quality elements there- 

 in, the whole fabric of Mechanism as ordinarily under- 

 stood is shaken to its foundations. The iron rule of the 

 past is broken; the future is not a mere rehearsal of the 

 past; in many cases the new effect is more than its pre- 

 existing cause. The universe ceases to be a hide-bound, 

 cast-iron, completely closed system from which real progress 

 and freedom are excluded. It is open in one direction, 

 the direction in which time is moving; the future faces an 

 open gateway, and the universe is the highway of the cre- 

 ative movement, of that great march in which all the units 

 and formations of Reality take their part and advance 

 towards a fuller measure of Wholeness. The freedom is 

 limited, the movement is slow, the character of the universe 

 is essentially conservative. But at any rate conservatism 

 is not the last word that can be said about it. It does not 

 go like a clock, completely manufactured, and once for all 

 i wound up at the beginning to mark a time fixed and pre- 

 i determined for it. It is slowly making itself, it is slowly 

 i winding itself up, it is slowly making its own time. It is 

 ■ a slow, tentative, perhaps in details a somewhat blundering 

 process; but it is real and creative; the new successful 

 effort is for ever issuing out of the old mistakes, and a 

 slow advance is being laboriously recorded and continuously 

 maintained. This figurative language, although perhaps 

 somewhat highly coloured, is really no exaggeration. 

 "Creativeness" is the key-word, and it is also the key posi- 

 tion in the great battle which is now being fought out be- 

 tween the nineteenth-century and the twentieth-century 



