vir MECHANISM AND HOLISM 175 



Life is not a new agent, with the mission of interfering 

 with the structure of matter; the control which it appears 

 to estabhsh is not a disturbance and upsetting of the 

 natural order. It is itself a structure, based on the lower 

 structures of the physico-chemical order; and the control 

 it introduces is nothing but an extension and develop- 

 ment of the natural physical control which, as we 

 have just seen, is already in operation in the lower 

 structures for the maintenance of inner stability. Life 

 is a new structure of the physico-chemical structures 

 of Nature. It is not there to cancel them, to upset or 

 destroy them, but to introduce a still deeper, more 

 fundamental element of structure into Nature. And the 

 structures of the lower order are necessary to it. With- 

 out matter no life, without the physico-chemical structures 

 no structure of life. The one is a stepping-stone to the 

 other; nay, more, is an essential element in the other; 

 the physico-chemical structures become the elements in the 

 new complex structure of life. No cancellation, no annihila- 

 tion, no repudiation of the past; but only more intensive 

 organisation of the pre-existing factors into the new creative 

 structure of life. 



The new structure of life differs from the physico-chemical 

 structures which are its material, its constituent elements; 

 the difference is most important and far-reaching, but 

 does not amount to antagonism. A deeper harmony is 

 introduced; the earlier, cruder notes of the physico- 

 chemical order become a new music of being. There 

 is an element of newness, of structural and functional 

 newness, introduced, but the new does not conceal 

 or annul the old. The structural march of Holism 

 has proceeded only one step, one great step forward; but 

 the system and character of its advance remain funda- 

 mentally the same. The new is a greater complication, a 

 deeper intensification; there is more selectiveness, more 

 direction, more control; there is more of the whole, of the 

 character of wholeness, in the new structure than in the 

 old. But there is no switching off from the old to the 



