EVOLUTION 1115 



abstract, fishing in the sea of reality with its own particular kind of 

 net, and necessarily missing much that is there. 



Thus there has been a compulsory retreat from an extreme 

 mechanistic position. If, for instance, we are thoroughgoing evolu- 

 tionists, then there must have been more potentialities in the 

 original nebula than are describable in the physico-chemical terms 

 of ordinary use. On the one hand, the structure of the atom turns 

 out to be more organismal than used to be supposed; on the other 

 hand, such processes as Natural Selection turn out to be less 

 mechanical than the extreme post-Darwinians imagined. "The old 

 fixed concepts and counters of thought are breaking down." Space 

 and Time become Space-Time; the entire universe has a definite 

 structure — a vibrant web of inter-relations; things, and concepts 

 too, meet and intermingle in their surrounding "fields"; the gulf 

 between matter and life has been much narrowed. The distinctive- 

 ness of matter, life, and mind (cosmosphere, biosphere, and socio- 

 sphere) remains; but science is getting nearer the underlying 

 continuity. 



There is a factor in matter that makes for structure, or, as some 

 would say, for integration. Thus the atom is a microcosm, whose 

 external properties are the expression and resultant of its internal 

 energies and their structural grouping. In the second fundamental 

 unit structure of the universe — namely, the cell — there is something 

 more; there is a factor making for central regulation and co-ordi- 

 nation of all the parts. It is, indeed, characteristic of the organism 

 that the parts appear to have a common plan or purpose, making 

 for the common well-being. What is this inner integrative factor 

 in evolution? 



According to General Smuts, there is operative throughout the 

 universe a factor which works towards the creation of progressive 

 wholes, hence the term Holism, from the Greek holos, a whole. 

 Thus a chemical compound like water is more of a whole than a 

 mixture of hydrogen and oxygen; and a cell is more of a whole 

 than a molecule of water; and a bird is more of a whole than a cell; 

 higher still are minds; and highest of all is a human personality. 

 We live in a universe of whole-making. "Holism is a process of 

 creative synthesis; the resulting wholes are not static, but dynamic, 

 evolutionary, creative." 



Evolution is occasionally retrogressive, degenerative, disintegra- 

 tive, but, on the whole, it has been progressive, advancing, inte- 

 grative ; and many evolutionists have laid emphasis on the successive 

 emergence of new and higher syntheses. What, apart from termino- 

 logy and lucid exposition, has General Smuts to add to this idea of 

 evolution as characteristically integrative ? It may be answered that 

 he has deepened our appreciation of what is implied in each and 

 every "whole", in which new aspects of reality emerge. Thus while 



