164 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



that suggests this beyond, be it even failure, sin and 

 suffering, is to us more than the lovely thing of which we 

 see the end. 1 



None the less, there remains the demand of reason and 

 knowledge for wholeness and completeness. Reality is 

 infinite, yet we desire to understand it as a whole. But 

 how can the infinite be a whole? How can it be com- 

 pletely understood without being summed up, and how can 

 it be even potentially summed up unless it be finite? It 

 is not the bare conception of the Infinite which gives rise 

 to the Kantian antinomies but the endeavour to unite the 

 two conceptions of the Infinite and the intelligible order 

 in the idea of an t Infinite whole. I shall touch on the 

 question again at a later stage. Here it is only necessary 

 to remark that once again in the conception of all our 

 experience as finite and yet as having roots in the Infinite, 

 we have the distinctive modern view of the world of human 

 thought as relative and yet capable through self-criticism 

 of transcending its own relativity, and relating itself to the 

 vaster whole of which it is only one facet. 



This conception again has its justification in the idea of 

 development. For as applied to knowledge the theory of 

 development explains the actual limitations of the mind by 

 the conditions of its genesis. It shows that adequate 

 adjustment of response to environment being a sufficient 

 condition of survival, a psycho-physical structure may be 

 blind to everything but just that which is necessary for 

 such adjustment. But it also reveals an indubitable growth 

 of faculty, and, what is most important, the emergence of 

 powers and interests unconnected with mere survival and 

 concerned with the expansion and- improvement of life. 



1 " Euclid always contemplates a straight line as drawn between two 

 definite points. . . . He never thinks of the line as an entity given 

 once and for all as a whole. This careful definition and limitation, 

 so as to exclude an infinity not immediately apparent to the senses, 

 was very characteristic of the Greeks in all their many activities. It 

 is enshrined in the difference between Greek architecture and Gothic 

 architecture, and between the Greek religion and modern religion. 

 The spire on a Gothic cathedral, and the importance of the unbounded 

 straight line in modern geometry are both emblematic of the trans- 

 formation of the modern world." Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics, 

 p. 119. 



