2 56 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



evolved out of a common pool; but the pool has not in con- 

 sequence dried up and ceased to be the ultimate sensuous 

 source of Holism in the human Mind. Is it a far-fetched 

 idea to assume that behind the special senses and their 

 evolution, and pari passu with their evolution, the mother 

 sense from which they were evolved has also silently con- 

 tinued to grow and evolve as the binding, uniting, cementing 

 element among the deliverances of the special senses? There 

 is a subtle, profound, synthetic activity at work among our 

 sensations and intuitions which cannot be ascribed to the 

 ordinary conscious activities of the Mind. All the wholes 

 we see in life as persons or things are composed of contribu- 

 tions from all or most of the special senses, so utterly fused 

 with each other that disentanglement becomes practically 

 impossible. And these uniquely unitary wholes exist for us 

 from the early beginnings of sensation and perception. So, 

 for instance, the unique whole of the mother is present to 

 the young baby from the early weeks of its life. Is there 

 not some subtle fusing, unifying sense at work pari passu 

 with the several differentiated senses? Is there not a sixth 

 sense, the sensus communis from which the others have been 

 derived without exhausting it, and whose development 

 has kept pace with their development? Such a sense would 

 not be particularly noticed as its activity is ordinarily and 

 as a matter of course apt to be ascribed to and apportioned 

 among the other senses. But the coherence of the deliver- 

 ances of the several senses and their fusion into unitary 

 wholes cannot be ascribed to some assumed attraction for 

 each other on their part! It is the Mind which fuses and 

 unites them; and if it is the mind, it must be a sensuous 

 element or factor in the mind over and above these special- 

 ised senses. To me it seems a simple and plausible idea that 

 there is in the mind more power of sensation and intuition 

 of the synthetic type than is to be found in or between the 

 special senses. Otherwise I find the unities underlying both 

 the subjects and objects of experience inexplicable. I am 

 not sure that our massive sense of reality, of the reality of 

 the external world, for instance, is not to be traced in a large 



