134 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



call the whole in the organism is comparatively far 

 greater and higher than the similar phenomenon in the 

 chemical compound as compared to the mere mixture. 

 Something indisputably new has been produced; there has 

 been creation; a new structure has arisen which has its 

 own categories of description; and to apply mere chemical 

 and physical concepts of action and description to this new 

 structure is to ignore the creative advance which has taken 

 place and to confound two entirely different, however 

 closely related, structures and stages of Evolution. The 

 physico-chemical view and explanation of organism there- 

 fore rests on a fundamental misconception and on a denial 

 or disregard of the creative element in natural Evolution. 

 There is the physical description of the mixture; there is 

 the chemical description of the compound; and there is 

 what I call the holistic description of the organism, which 

 recognises the qualitative newness and sui generis nature 

 of the structure which bears the characters of what we call 

 life. The apparent materials may even be the same in all 

 three cases; but the character and intensity of their union 

 in each case varies in such a way that entirely different 

 structures with entirely different characters result. There is 

 a rising element of wholeness in all three structures, and the 

 holistic character is by no means confined to the third or 

 organic structure. But its wholeness is much more marked 

 and pronounced than that of the other two; it is, in fact, 

 the very type and exemplar of a whole; and a purely 

 physico-chemical explanation of its nature and functions 

 cannot possibly do justice to this unique holistic character. 

 This is but another way of affirming the creative character 

 of the advance from the mere physical mixture to the 

 chemical structure, and still more in the advance from the 

 chemical to the organic structure in Nature. The creative 

 advance is the fact, to which our conceptual theories of 

 explanation have to conform. The creativeness consists 

 in the progressive advance in respect of the character of 

 wholeness which distinguishes the three stages of structure; 

 and the advance is in a geometrical rather than an arith- 



