INVOLUTION 4 m 



not to unfold from within ; it is to infold from 

 without. Growth is no mere extension from 

 a root but a taking possession of, or a being 

 possessed by, an ever widening Environment, a 

 continuous process of assimilation of the seen 

 or Unseen, a ceaseless redistribution of energies 

 flowing into the evolving organism from the Uni- 

 verse around it. The supreme factor in all de- 

 velopment is Environment. Half the confusions 

 which reign round the process of Evolution, and 

 half the objections to it, arise from considering the 

 evolving object as a self-sufficient whole. Produce 

 an organism, plant, animal, man, society, which will 

 evolve in vacuo and the right is yours to say that 

 the tree lies in the root, the flower in the bud, 

 the man in the embryo, the social organism in the 

 family of an anthropoid ape. If an organism is to 

 be judged in terms of the immediate Environment 

 of its roots, the tree is a clay tree ; but if it is to 

 be judged by stem, leaves, fruit, it is not a clay 

 tree. If the moral or social organism is to be 

 judged in terms of the Environment of its roots, 

 the moral and social organism is a material or- 

 ganism ; but if it is to be judged in terms of the 

 higher influences which enter into the making of its 

 stem, leaves, fruit, it is not a material organism. 

 Everything that lives, and every part of everything 



