VII MECHANISM AND HOLISM , i8i 



The structure of mind is not mechanistic, nor is that of Hfe. 

 The fact is that there is an insensible passage of change 

 from the earher to the later, but that the change is never 

 complete and that something of the earlier mechanistic 

 phases survives in the later spiritual phases, which are 

 essentially non-mechanistic. The passage is a creative one 

 at all stages, elements of the new are continually appearing, 

 but on the whole so minute as to escape notice. It is only 

 at certain stages that the new appears to be not only 

 sensible but striking. And here our experience seems to 

 have magnified the change by hypostatising the new into 

 a distinct substance or entity, and placing it in opposition 

 to the old according to a fundamental polar tendency or 

 polarity in all thought and experience. In measuring and 

 reading-off reality we must make allowance for the small 

 eccentricities of our instrument of thought, and we need 

 not on that account discredit the instrument itself. 

 If we make the small allowances necessary within the 

 margin of essential error, we find the breaks and gaps 

 and hypostatised distinctions are smoothed out and 

 accounted for, and there retnains one great fundamental 

 Process creatively flowing forward and giving to all the 

 manifold and diversified forms of existence the unity 

 which is theirs by inalienable birthright. That Process 

 is not a mere ideal; it is already, in some measure, 

 a fact, accounting for all the particular facts and things 

 of the actual universe. It is Holism, and it should not be 

 confused with the many other things which are its legitimate 

 or (where thought errs) its illegitimate offspring. 



