170 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



life structures presuppose energy structures, which are 

 themselves graded according to the various forms of physical 

 and chemical grouping. 



The via media, the way of reconciliation between the 

 mistaken extremes, which we have followed, is often missed 

 by others because they are misled by hypostatising body 

 and mind as two distinct entities or substances or res, as 

 Descartes called them. These two entities or substances 

 are then brought to interact by way of external relations, 

 which are naturally of a mechanical character, as all external 

 relations are. This interaction by way of externality 

 reduces mind to the level of body and thus ends by a 

 practical denial of mind. This mistake is then corrected by 

 the opposite mistake of an attack on the body or the physical 

 order. Thus the Naturalistic and Spiritualistic fallacies 

 arise. Here these mistakes have been avoided by our 

 refusal to look at the two physical and non-physical systems 

 as distinct entities coming into external relations. Clerk- 

 Maxwell's suggestion has taken us right into the inner 

 structure of the gas, and has shown us an inner selective 

 process at work which is by no means merely mechanical, 

 and which has resulted in the segregation of a new structure 

 from the old in a way which constitutes an apparent, but 

 merely an apparent, and no real breach of the universal 

 laws of energy. The fable of the selective demon contains 

 a real truth, and points to the nature of the activity of life 

 and mind in bodily structure. But at best the fable is 

 but a crude and rough version of a matter which requires 

 much more careful exploration. And we therefore proceed 

 now to consider in closer detail the nature of the bio- 

 chemical and psycho-physical unities or wholes, and the 

 relations between the two mixed systems which they include 

 in their wholeness or unity. The best vindication of Holism 

 as a category of explanation would be the light it could 

 throw on the mode of union of the two systems, on the 

 way in which body and life, life and mind constitute unities 

 or wholes such as we know in experience. 



Life the selector, and Mind the director, how do they 



