i8o HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



mechanism? And is Mind a still more refined mechanism? 

 If not, then where in the progress of my argument 

 does the Mechanism come to an end and the Holism 

 begin? Where is the great break, the great rift between 

 the material and the non-material which experience 

 reveals? Or is experience at fault in accentuating this 

 great break or rift?" In answering these questions I 

 shall not go back to the preceding argument, but 

 I shall briefly state my general impression, my standpoint 

 in this matter, which is both the source and the outcome 

 of the preceding argument. Mechanism is not final. It is 

 not all Mechanism at the beginning, nor is it all Holism at 

 the end. If the two have to be distinguished we may say 

 that they vary in inverse proportions with the forward 

 march of Evolution. But the deeper view does not 

 distinguish them, and discloses the fundamental unity. 

 Mechanism, as I have said, is a phase, an earlier immature 

 phase of Holism; just as life is an intermediate phase, and 

 mind is a later phase; while other phases are probably in 

 store for the experience of the higher race which will 

 succeed the human in the future. Holism is a mediating 

 concept; it is the reality which underlies all the phases. 

 And in the self-fulfilment of Holism, one phase passes 

 into another. And the past phases endure, though in 

 ever diminishing degree, in the newer phases. Hence 

 I have adopted the imagery of the structures, ever more 

 complex structures embracing the same material as the 

 earlier structures, together with these earlier structures 

 which are the units of the later structures. I have adopted 

 this structural imagery because thought is relational or 

 structural, and therefore more easily grasps elements of 

 structure than mere abstract principles or tendencies; and 

 because in its interpretation of the physical world thought 

 has already adopted the imagery of structures. I have 

 therefore represented Holism as structural at all its known 

 phases, and have distinguished the phases as differences of, 

 and advances in, structure. But structure does not mean 

 Mechanism. Mechanism is but one form of structure. 



