2i6 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



by no means exhausts the function of Holism in organic de- 

 velopment. It is not only productive of variation, it is just 

 as much repressive of variation. Holism is as often inhibi- 

 tive as creative; it keeps back certain elements at the same 

 time that it pushes forward others, and in this way secures 

 a balanced movement and progress of the organic whole. 

 When, for instance, the form and characteristics of a gorilla 

 are compared with the human t5q)e it becomes clear that in 

 the human evolution certain tendencies have been held 

 definitely in check, and the utter caricature in appearance, 

 which would have resulted from unrestrained development, 

 has thus been prevented. Nobody who ignores this negative 

 aspect of Evolution can possibly understand the present 

 forms of animals, compared with their living or fossil affilia- 

 tions. Tendencies to variation, which were realised in the 

 case of Neanderthal man, have been more or less severely 

 repressed in the present human races. If there had been 

 unrestrained evolution of all potential variations, the results 

 would have been truly dreadful in their grotesqueness. In 

 fact we find at work in organic Evolution an influence not 

 unlike that which at a much later stage we recognise as the 

 ethical control of feelings, impulses and instinctive move- 

 ments of an undesirable character. The whole in personal- 

 ity, the whole in its ethical flowering in the human, means 

 not only expression of certain moral qualities, but also and 

 equally repression of others. Elements and tendencies 

 which we find strongly operative in our instinctive or organic 

 nature we have to keep in check, to hold down severely, and 

 to prevent from emergence in our characters as a whole. 

 This is the very essence of Holism in its mature ethical 

 development. There is something very similar and equally 

 fundamental in the activity of Holism in the earlier purely 

 organic phases of Evolution. In any individual organism 

 the whole is in control, pushing forward some tendencies 

 and keeping back others, expressing some variations and 

 repressing others, and through all maintaining a mobile equi- 

 librium of all the elements, positive and negative, that are 

 uniquely blended in the individual. Thus it is that if we 



