340 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



conjoint fields. And the more psychic they are, the more 

 they are under the influence of strong passions or carried 

 away by some contagious idea, the more overpowering the 

 common field becomes. The force of the group field is 

 generally out of all proportion to the strength of the idea 

 or the passions in the individual units composing the group. 

 The group field is so to say the multiplication of all the 

 individual fields. The subject falls under the study of 

 social psychology and is referred to here only for the pur- 

 pose of illustration. We have in such cases an organic 

 situation but not an organism. Groups, families, churches, 

 societies, nations are organic but not organisms. 



Taking all the wholes in the world and viewing them 

 together in Nature, we see a similar interpenetration and 

 enrichment of the common field. When we speak of Nature 

 we do not mean a collection of unconnected items, we mean 

 wholes with their interlocking fields; we mean a creative 

 situation which is far more than the mere gathering of 

 individuals and their separate fields. This union of fields is 

 creative of a new and indefinable spirit or atmosphere; the 

 external mechanical situation is transformed into an in- 

 ward synthetic, " organic " situation or atmosphere. This 

 " organic " Nature seems in certain situations to be alive to 

 us, to stir strange unsuspected depths in us, to make an 

 appeal to our emotional nature which often " lies too deep 

 for words." Thus we come to consider Nature as an organ- 

 ism; we personify her, we even deify and worship her. But 

 the sober fact is that there is no new whole or organism of 

 Nature; there is only Nature become organic through the 

 intensification of her total field. In other words. Nature is 

 holistic without being a real whole. 



Nor is it merely we humans, with our intense psychic 

 sensitivity, who feel this appeal of organic or holistic Nature. 

 All organic creatures feel it too. The new science of Ecology 

 is simply a recognition of the fact that all organisms feel 

 the force and moulding effect of their environment as a 

 whole. There is much more in Ecology than merely the 

 striking down of the unfit by way of Natural Selection. 



