148 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



synthesis sums up all the fundamental problems of matter 

 and life and mind. The answer to this question will in 

 some measure supply the key to all or most of our great 

 problems. My answer has already been given; it is in one 

 word Holism. But it is necessary to show how the answer 

 works in detail, and what its relations are to the current 

 and popular view-points which still dominate our science 

 and philosophy. Science and philosophy alike are vast 

 structures, laboriously built up on the basis of certain fun- 

 damental concepts. The attempt I am making is to intro- 

 duce into these elaborate systems a new basic concept, per- 

 haps more fundamental than any of them. And it will be 

 clear that such an attempt must be a most difficult and 

 hazardous one; it involves far-reaching readjustments of 

 settled points of view, the reopening of questions long looked 

 upon as answered and done with, the envisaging of many 

 old problems from a new and novel point of view. To insert 

 the spear-point of the new concept into these vast closed 

 settled systems may at first sight appear a revolutionary, an 

 iconoclastic procedure. But I hope I shall be able to show 

 that this is not really so, that at any rate to begin with the 

 concept of Holism will fit constructively into the work of 

 the past, whatever its ultimate effects may be in the reshap- 

 ing of these systems on the new basis; that in relation to the 

 old concepts it appears in the field not as an enemy but as a 

 friend and ally in the great battle of knowledge, and that 

 it will help materially in the solution of problems which are 

 practically insoluble on the lines of the old concepts. The 

 concept of Holism is brought forward as a reinforcement 

 at a critical point in the battle, in the hope that it will help to 

 bring victory. But I do not conceal the further hope that 

 in its ulterior effects it will lead to a recasting of much of 

 the situation of knowledge as at present envisaged, and will 

 render obsolete and replace much that is at present con- 

 sidered valuable if not fundamental both in science and 

 philosophy. 



How then does the concept of Holism fit into that of 

 Mechanism without directly negativing it, but with the 



