234 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



regulation. That it will and indeed must have such an 

 influence is at once intelligible from the fact that at bottom 

 individuation and regulation are, as we have seen, dual 

 aspects of the same inner process or activity, and any 

 accentuation of the " individuation " factor must at once 

 react on the other " regulation " factor. Thus it is that 

 while in Nature order is of a mechanical character and in 

 the world of life is of an automatic character, certain, 

 regular and unfailing; in man, where the mental factor has 

 come into its own, it is neither mechanical nor automatic, 

 but of a new plastic variable type which we call conscious 

 and voluntary. In fact the whole system of regulation and 

 control is fundamentally transformed; new mental agencies 

 seem to be at work and new categories of description and 

 explanation become necessary. The appearance of Mind has 

 meant, not only an epoch-making development of the feature 

 of individuality, but also and in consequence a new system 

 of regulation and control, not so regular and automatic and 

 effective as the older inorganic and organic systems, and 

 still comparatively vacillating, irregular and uncertain in 

 its action, but vastly more comprehensive and with a power 

 which promises ultimately to give a complete command 

 over the conditions of matter and life. There is a mastery 

 in the new system of control such as was not dreamt of at 

 earlier stages of Evolution. Organic regulation, however 

 vast, elaborate and effective, has nothing of the sheer 

 mastery and domination and free creative power which 

 characterises the new control. Conscious planning on the 

 mental level entirely revolutionises the situation and sub- 

 stitutes freedom and action for the fixed automatic behaviour 

 and routine of the biological order. 



These general remarks will serve to place Mind in the 

 history of Evolution, and to show the nature of its relations 

 to what has gone before and what is to follow. It marks 

 a new departure not only in the feature of holistic regulation 

 and control, to which so much attention has been paid in 

 the foregoing chapters, but also and far more specially in 

 the feature of individuation, which up to now has been of 



