332 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



rather by way of the old, as it is not known how the new 

 actually arises from the old. As I have explained in Chapter 

 VII, Holism is the presiding genius of this advance. It deter- 

 mines the direction of the advance, and it incorporates the 

 new element of advance synthetically with the pre-existing 

 structure. It thus harmonises the old and the new in its 

 own unity; it synthesises Variation and Heredity; and by 

 slow degrees and over enormous periods of time carries 

 forward the creative process from the most simple, primitive, 

 inorganic beginnings to the most exalted spiritual creations. 

 From the atom to the Soul, from matter to Personality is a 

 long way, marked by innumerable steps, each of which 

 involved a real creative advance and added something 

 essentially new to what had gone before. Such seems to be 

 the nature of Evolution, and it appears to be fatal alike to 

 the retrospective interpretation of the universe according 

 to Idealism, and the prospective interpretation according to 

 Naturalism. Mind or Spirit did not exist at the beginning, 

 either implicitly or explicitly; but it does most certainly 

 exist now as a real factor. 



Another world-conception which may be considered as 

 having considerable affinities with the Holistic view is 

 that of Leibniz's Monadology. The resemblance is, how- 

 ever, confined to certain aspects of the respective central 

 ideas; beyond those aspects the two views are totally and 

 essentially different. There is a close resemblance between 

 the central ideas of wholes and monads; that is all. The 

 unities and units which exist in Nature seemed to Leibniz to 

 be of the greatest importance for the interpretation of the 

 universe; not the One but the Many and their intimate 

 nature seemed to him to supply the key to the great riddle. 

 I have in the foregoing reached the concept of wholes by a 

 different process of reasoning from that followed by Leibniz, 

 but the result looks very much like that arrived at by him 

 along different lines. And the convergence of the two views 

 from totally different standpoints would appear to suggest 

 that there is a substantial element of truth and value in the 

 concept of wholes, as there undoubtedly is in the Leibnizian 



