2 28 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



mental difficulty for psychology arises. For Mind is much 

 more subtle, pervasive and masterful than life and still 

 more so than matter. Its " field " covers and penetrates 

 the '' fields '' of matter and life in a way which makes the 

 tracing of hard-and-fast boundaries very difficult, if not 

 practically impossible. It seems to impinge in all directions 

 on areas already apparently securely held by the other 

 departments of natural and biological science; its claims 

 are contested in many directions; and serious doubts arise 

 in how far it really has a territory of its own distinct from 

 other territories in science. The nature of Mind makes 

 this difficulty inherent and irremediable, and psychology as 

 a separate science will always have to remain content with 

 an intensive cultivation of its central area only, and a 

 sharing of the outer marches and outlying territories with 

 the natural and biological sciences. To me it seems that 

 such a condominium of the debatable area, however 

 awkward for psychology, is by no means an unmixed evil 

 for science in general, and that the intimate contact of the 

 different view-points and methods of psychology and the 

 other sciences over this area may prove fruitful and pro- 

 ductive of great advances in future. This is, however, 

 remarked by the way. My real point is the difference in 

 the treatment of mind from the standpoints of psychology 

 and of Holism respectively. For psychology Mind is a 

 distinct phenomenon to be studied by itself. For Holism 

 Mind is but a phase, though a culminating phase, of its 

 universal process. The question of boundaries, so funda- 

 mental for the psychologist, does not exist for us. From 

 our point of view that is a mere parochial question; for us 

 Mind is not merely a phenomenon of human and animal 

 psychology. We have to trace the connections of Mind 

 with the earlier phases of matter and life; we have, so to 

 say, to lay bare the foundations of Mind in the order of the 

 universe. Mind as an expression of Holism, Mind as an 

 organ of Holism: that is our problem. 



We have already seen that the atom and the cell were 

 the two great departures in the upbuilding of the universe, 



