158 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



becomes a mere hallucination. No, I reply, it is not the 

 reality of life and mind that is denied, but their construc- 

 tion as entities of a character and kind to interact with 

 other entities. It is the false constructions of life and 

 mind and their erection into independent entities which is 

 the source of the trouble and ought to be demolished. A 

 true view of the facts not only will do justice to life and 

 mind, but will remove the problem which a false view has 

 artificially created. And Holism is brought forward as a 

 view-point, a category and an activity which reproduces 

 reality and renders the facts intelligible without distortion 

 or contradiction. Current views of life and mind are wrong; 

 and it is partly to correct these errors that the wide concept 

 of Holism, which includes, underlies and transcends them 

 both, is introduced. Our views of immaterial things have 

 been in process of evolution for thousands of years, and 

 the process is far from complete yet. Remember the view 

 of the soul, held by the Homeric Greeks, as a pale copy of 

 the body; and indeed the present popular notion of ghosts 

 scarcely yet differs from this view. Remember the con- 

 troversy among the early Christians, of which there is an 

 echo in St. Paul's great chapter in the Epistle to the 

 Corinthians (i Cor. xv. 35-50) — whether it is the corporeal 

 body or a spiritual body corresponding to it which would 

 be raised to immortality. We still construe life, mind and 

 the soul according to physical analogies or material cate- 

 gories. Let anybody sit down and try to form for himself 

 an idea of the soul's disembodied existence, and he will 

 convince himself how difficult it is to get away from physical 

 analogies, from the pale copies of earthly existences, not 

 very much different from the shades which wander through 

 the cold Homeric Hades. We conceive spiritual things very 

 much on the lines of material things; though conceived as 

 on different planes they are not too far apart, not too 

 different from each other to be able to act on each other 

 and influence each other. It is these conceptions of life 

 and mind as semi-physical entities, reminiscent and redolent 

 of the past, which at bottom underlie many of the great 



