214 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



or atrophying organs. Both are borne along, covered and 

 shielded by the main characters of the organism. From the 

 point of view of survival value, as from so many other 

 points of view, the whole is more important than any of its 

 parts. And so it comes that the organism is a most com- 

 plicated system, a present living unity embodying its far- 

 away past no less than its dim distant future. The whole 

 controls, guides and conserves all. The fate of any par- 

 ticular part, considered by itself and on its own merits, 

 would be an inexplicable mystery, and might be expected 

 to be the very opposite of what happens in practice. When, 

 however, it is viewed from its position and function in the 

 whole, the mystery is explained; we see how different the 

 laws of life are from the laws of mechanics, and how wrong 

 it is to apply mechanistic and atomistic conceptions in a 

 region where Holism prevails. 



To understand how a small variation is favoured, we may 

 represent an organism as a moving developing equilibrium, 

 which is never perfectly adjusted because it has a persistent 

 slight overbalance in the direction of development. Com- 

 plete equilibrium is never attained, and would be fatal if it 

 were attained, as it would mean stagnation, atrophy and 

 death. And so the overbalance in a certain direction or 

 with a definite orientation continues indefinitely, and all 

 small developments and adjustments and "variations" which 

 have that specific orientation have the momentum of the 

 whole behind them and tend to survive and grow while 

 others in other directions are dropped and discarded. One 

 may accordingly say that in each case "the whole" is a 

 co-worker with its small variations which will eventually be 

 useful; that as an active factor its influence is on the side 

 of such small variations, and that with this inner nurture 

 and support these small variations are practically inde- 

 pendent of external support for their survival and steady 

 evolution. 



The activity of the whole is seen not only in the main- 

 tenance and evolution of the small variation and all the 

 subordinate adjustments that go with it, but also and espe- 



