3i8 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



The New Physics has traced the physical universe to Action; 

 and Relativity has led to the concept of Space-Time as the 

 medium for this Action. Space-Time means structure in the 

 widest sense, and thus the universe as we know it starts as struc- 

 tural Action; Action which is, however, not confined to its struc- 

 tures, but continually overflows into their "fields" and becomes the 

 basis for the active dynamic Evolution which creatively shapes 

 the universe. The "creativeness" of evolutionary Holism and its 

 procedure by way of small increments or instalments of '^creation" 

 are its most fundamental characters, from which all the particular 

 forms and characteristics of the universe flow. 



The ignorance or neglect of these two fundamental characters 

 accounts for the elements of error involved in certain widely held 

 world-conceptions, such as Naturalism, Idealism, Monadism and 

 Spiritual Pluralism or Panpsychism. Naturalism is wrong where 

 it fails to recognise that there is creative Evolution, and that real 

 new entities have arisen in the universe, in addition to the physical 

 conditions of the beginning. Idealism is wrong where it fails to 

 recognise that the Spirit or Psyche, although now a real factor, did 

 not exist either explicitly or implicitly at the beginning, and has 

 arisen creatively in the course of organic Evolution. The Monad- 

 ism of Leibniz and his modern sympathisers, while a great advance 

 in that it recognises the inward holistic element in things and per- 

 sons, yet goes wrong when it attributes an element of Mind or 

 Spirit to physical things like atoms or chemical structures. While 

 things are wholes they are not yet souls ; and the view of the uni- 

 verse as a Society of Spirits ignores the fact that spirit is a more 

 recent creative arrival in the universe and cannot be retrospectively 

 antedated to the earlier material phase. Spiritual Pluralism is a 

 modern refinement of Monadism and similarly subject to the crit- 

 icism that it fails to recognize the really creative character of 

 Evolution. 



This is a universe of whole-making, not of soul-making merely. 

 The view of the universe as purely spiritual, as transparent to the 

 Spirit, fails to account for its dark opaque character ethically and 

 rationally; for its accidental and contributory features, its ele- 

 ments of error, sin and suffering, which will not be conjured away 

 by an essentially poetic world-view. Holism explains both the 

 realism and the idealism at the heart of things, and is therefore a 

 more accurate description of reality than any of these more or less 

 partial and one-sided world-views. 



Nature or the Universe is sometimes metaphorically spoken of 

 as a Whole or The Whole. Sometimes it is even personified, and 

 the trend of Evolution then becomes the Purpose of some tran- 

 scendent Mind. All this is, however, unwarranted by the facts and 

 unnecessary as an explanation of Evolution. Holism as an inner 



