VI FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 135 



metical progression, if one may be allowed a mathematical , 

 analogy. The physical and chemical categories still apply, ' 

 but they are not sufficient, and have to be supplemented 

 by the holistic categories which correspond to and express 

 the greater and qualitatively more intense holism which 

 characterises the organism as distinguished from the mixture 

 or the compound. 



Let me here point out that it is not all causation which 

 is creative; much of the causation in the universe is purely 

 mechanical and produces nothing new. Only wholes are 

 creative; only the causality of wholes produces effects which 

 are really new. It is conceivable, it is even possible, that 

 out of free scattered protons and electrons new atoms, say 

 of Hydrogen, new physical structures may be synthetically 

 built up, just as it is conceivable and probable that organic 

 wholes or life structures have arisen from purely inorganic 

 materials. That would mean the creation of matter or the 

 spontaneous generation of life — both still unrealised possi- 

 bilities from an experimental point of view. Structure in 

 fact and in Nature arises from pre-existing structures 

 whether in the organic or inorganic domain. Omne vivum e 

 vivo is a formula which applies to all wholes and not merely 

 organic wholes. Only wholes produce wholes, and only in 

 wholes does the new emerge; wholes form the pathway of 

 creative reality; only the causality of wholes is creative of 

 the new. 



This is so because of what I have already pointed out 

 above when discussing how a whole transforms a "cause" 

 or stimulus applied to it into something quite different from 

 what it was before. If an external ''cause" is applied to 

 an organism or living body it will become internalised and 

 transformed, and will be experienced as a stimulus, which 

 in its turn will be followed by a response. The response is 

 not the mere mechanical effect of the cause, and this is due 

 to the complete transformation which the latter has under- 

 gone. In the moment which elapses between stimulus and 

 response a miracle is performed; a vast series of organic 

 changes is set going of which comparatively little is known 



