IX MIND AS AN ORGAN OF WHOLES 229 



the two great abiding peaks of achievement in the march 

 of creative Holism, which have in turn become the basis 

 and fundamental units of all existence. We now come to 

 the third, which in the order of the universe is perhaps as 

 great a departure, and from our human point of view even 

 more significant than the other two. In Mind we reach 

 the most significant factor in the universe, the supreme 

 organ which controls all the other structures and mecha- 

 nisms. Mind is not yet the master, but it is the key in the 

 hands of the master, Personality. It unlocks the door 

 and releases the new-born spirit from the bonds and shackles 

 and dungeons of natural necessity. It is the supreme 

 system of control, and it holds the secret of freedom. 

 Through the opened door, and the mists which still dim 

 the eyes of the emergent spirit, it points to the great vistas 

 of knowledge. Mind is the eye with which the universe 

 beholds itself and knows itself divine. In Mind Nature at 

 last emerges from the deep sleep of its far-off beginnings, 

 becomes awake, aware and conscious, begins to know her- 

 self, and consciously, instead of blindly and unconsciously, 

 to reach out towards freedom, towards welfare, and towards 

 the goal of the ultimate Good. Mind is thus the organ of 

 control, of knowledge and of values. No wonder that to 

 the young Socrates it came as a great spiritual revelation 

 when first he learned from Anaxagoras that not matter but 

 mind was the ultimate principle of the universe. It is at 

 any rate worthy to be set by the side of the atom 

 and the cell as among the fundamental advances in creative 

 Holism. 



It would be an interesting speculation at this stage to 

 pause and ask, from our knowledge of the previous lines of 

 advance in the atom and the cell, what the next step was 

 to be, or rather in what direction it was to be. In what 

 way precisely does Mind fit into the scheme of the earlier 

 structures and mark another step forward in the great line 

 of holistic advance? An answer to this larger, more 

 speculative question may give us some general clue to the 

 nature of Mind as the next great factor or phase in the 



