776 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



and industrial world, where the comprehensive grasp of 

 details in a single mind has in many cases been quite as 

 important as the highest professional knowledge of the 

 expert or the inventor. Huge industrial enterprises 

 grow up like organisms under the combining genius of 

 great organisers, who themselves boast of no actual 

 originality in discovery or invention, and they not infre- 

 quently collapse as suddenly with the departure of the 

 leading mind, just as a living organism collapses when 

 the indescribable spirit of life has left it. 

 39. The reason why the atomising process is inadequate 



Why the 



atomising seems to be twofold. First, the actual arrangement of 



process is 



inadequate, separate things, be they physical particles or mental ideas, 

 if once broken up cannot be again restored as it was found 

 and seen in its actual existence ; something is lost which 

 cannot be regained. And further, the process of analysis, 

 of finding the ultimate constituent elements, is endless : 

 as space is infinitely divisible, so also the elements out of 

 which things natural are compounded seem to be out of 

 reach. The lane through which we walk in the attempt to 

 reach the last constituent elements of things natural has 

 contrary to a popular saying no end, it never turns, 

 and the point which we choose for retracing our steps is 

 purely arbitrary, fixed by the knowledge of the moment. 

 The analytic process is irreversible. The point at which 

 we start to synthesise or put together is purely arbitrary, 

 fixed by our knowledge or rather our ignorance, and the 

 product of such synthesis is accordingly artificial, not 

 natural : the world of things, images of thought or 

 practical constructions, is accordingly artificial ; these 

 are neither natural nor artistic. 





