326 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



which results from the principles discussed in the foregoing 

 chapters. The final net result is that this is a whole- 

 making universe, that it is the fundamental character of 

 this universe to be active in the production of wholes, of 

 ever more complete and advanced wholes, and that the 

 Evolution of the universe, inorganic and organic, is nothing 

 but the record of this whole-making activity in its progres- 

 sive development. Let me briefly summarise the main 

 points in the preceding argument which lead up to this 

 result. 



We have seen that this is an essentially and wholly active 

 universe; that its apparent passiveness as matter is nothing 

 but massed energy, and that activity is therefore its funda- 

 mental character. Indeed, energy itself is too narrow and 

 metrical a term to do justice to this character of the physical 

 universe as concrete activity. Activity in time, energy mul- 

 tiplied by time, Action as it is technically called in physics, 

 is the physical basis of the universe as a whole, and nothing 

 besides. The universe is a flowing stream in Space-Time, 

 and its reality is not intelligible apart from this concept of 

 activity. So much the new Relativity has made us realise; 

 and to this conclusion the profoundest reflections on the 

 nature of the universe also tend. For us, constituted as we 

 are, the universe starts and takes its origin in Action. With 

 deeper meaning than ever before we realise that '^ Im An- 

 fang war die That." It is, of course, conceivable that much 

 lies beyond and back of this beginning as it appears to us. 

 It may be that the universe of Action has itself evolved 

 out of a prior order which lies beyond human ken; that 

 there is an infinite regress of celestial Evolution into time 

 past; and that the physical universe as it now appears 

 to or is conceived by us is the evolved result of inconceivable 

 prior developments. We do not know, and speculation 

 would be barren and futile. 



' The physical stuff of the universe is therefore really and 

 truly Action and nothing else. But when we say that, when 

 we make activity instead of matter the stuff or material of 

 the universe, a new view-point is subtly introduced. For the 



