338 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



ever mitigating the conflict through a higher system of 

 controls. It is for ever evolving new and higher wholes 

 as the organs of a greater harmony. Through the steadily 

 rising series of wholes it is producing ever more highly 

 organised centres whose inner freedom and creative 

 metabolism transform the fetters of fate and the contin- 

 gencies of circumstance into the freedom and harmony of 

 a more profoundly co-operative universe. But though the 

 crest of the spiritual wave is no doubt steadily rising, the 

 ocean which supports it contains much more besides the 

 Spirit. Enough for us to know that the lower is not in 

 hopeless enmity to the higher, but its basis and support, a 

 feeder to it, a source whence it mysteriously draws its 

 creative strength for further effort, and hence the necessary 

 pre-condition for all further advance. Thus beneath all 

 logical or ethical disharmonies there exists the deeper crea- 

 tive, genetic harmony between the lower and the higher 

 grades in the Holistic series. 



Reference must be made to one more question or set of 

 questions before we conclude. I have said before that the 

 scope of this work is limited, and that it is not intended to 

 deal exhaustively with the entire subject of Holism. But 

 within the limits of the introductory task" which I have 

 set myself here, one problem remains to be mentioned. It 

 is the problem of The Whole, the great whole itself as dis- 

 tinguished from the lesser wholes which we have found as 

 the texture of Evolution. In other words, is there a Whole, 

 a Supreme Whole, of which all lesser wholes are but parts or 

 organs? And if there is such a Whole of wholes, how is it 

 to be conceived? Is it to be conceived on the analogy of 

 an organism, as Nature? Or is it to be conceived on the 

 analogy of Mind and Personality as a Supreme divine 

 Personality? Or are both these conceptions inadmissible, 

 and is there some other way of conceiving the system of 

 wholes in their actual or possible synthesis? These are 

 very difficult and thorny questions, but it is clear that we 

 cannot leave the coi;sideration of wholes at the present stage 

 of our argument. For that argument implies clearly some- 



