3o6 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



in the growth of a crystal or in the development of a plant or 

 animal. To that extent and in that sense Necessity reigns 

 in the plant or animal no less than in the crystal. But that 

 does not exhaust the matter. On the basis of these natural 

 conditions and factors Holism proceeds to bring about re- 

 sults which are impossible in the case of mere mechanisms. 

 Holism does not annihilate its form of space when it proceeds 

 on its road of inward development, but within the limits and 

 limitations of the spatial external form it proceeds to the 

 creation of a new inner world. In the same way Holism 

 accepts its own well-known natural conditions and principles 

 of action when it comes to develop inward organic or per- 

 sonal wholes, but it evokes meanings and values and results 

 from those conditions which would have been impossible on 

 the plane of the merely spatial or mechanical. Holism, while 

 in no sense overriding natural factors which are but an earlier 

 phase of its own activities, develops inside and through 

 those factors the individual wholes of organism and 

 Personality. Similar causes produce similar effects under 

 similar conditions: that is a statement of natural law. But 

 the miracle of Holism is performed in that infinitely small 

 or timeless, spaceless interval which elapses between cause 

 and effect. Hence whereas on the physico-chemical plane 

 cause A is followed by effect B, in the case of an organism 

 the operation of Holism is seen in that cause A is followed 

 not only by effect B, but also by a new non-mechanical 

 element X of a holistic character in the shape of what is 

 ordinarily called life or sensation, organic or mental activity. 

 Organism as a whole is not merely a link in the chain of 

 natural causation, but is itself an absorber, assimilator and 

 transformer of causes on the way to their effects. And this 

 active free power of absorption, assimilation and transforma- 

 tion is evidenced not only in the creative appearance of the 

 new vital or mental element X, but also in the natural sense 

 of freedom which accompanies this activity in personal 

 consciousness. A causal stimulus applied externally to an 

 organism does not merely result in some mechanical move- 



