OBJECT AND LIVING ORGANISM 89 



solely on the organisers, and aims at suppressing the content- 

 qualities. This is most striking when we consider the de- 

 liberate refusal of physics to consider the laws that prevail 

 between the content-qualities and their specific forms or 

 scales. 



Moreover, physics chooses to ignore the fact that every 

 substance can hold at every point at least one quality from 

 every scale, for this is incompatible with the cherished hope 

 of finding the primitive atom. 



So long as we regard the atom as an actual object, and at 

 the same time as the element from which objects are built up, 

 we shall never get away from contradictions. If, on the other 

 hand, we take it to be a local sign which can enter into associa- 

 tion with every content-sign, we can meet all difficulties in a 

 consistent way. 



It seems, then, that we must abandon our fond belief in 

 an absolute, material world, with its eternal natural laws, 

 and admit that it is the laws of our subject which make and 

 maintain the world of human beings. 



THE CONTINUITY OF THE WORLD-PICTURE 



The popular, physical way of looking at the world, which 

 assumes the actual existence of objects, accepts unreflectingly 

 certain axioms which assuredly cannot be arrived at from 

 experience of objects, but are derived solely from the organi- 

 sation of our mind, for that lies at the basis of every 

 experience. Chief among these axioms is the theory of 

 the continuity of the world, which contrasts so strikingly 

 with the fragmentary character of our individual experiences. 



The principle of the continuity of the world takes its origin, 

 in part, from Kant's theory of the forms of experience. The 

 forms space, time and motion are, in their very nature, con- 

 tinuous and quite independent of the individual experience, 



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