350 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



By this reasoning, while it is true that its contribution 

 to an ultimate harmony is a condition of everything that 

 exists, it is equally true that the harmony is conditioned by 

 everything that exists. Harmony alone does not explain 

 existence or the world would be already perfect. What 

 exists must be capable of harmonisation, and the configura- 

 tion which it assumes at any time must be one determined 

 ultimately by the effort towards harmony. But it is an 

 impulse which requires the whole evolutionary process to 

 effect it. The elements within which it works, then, are 

 originally by no means a harmony. As they stand they 

 are indifferent, and in consequence the behaviour of any 

 one may clash and collide with that of any other, and any 

 partially formed order or combination of elements may be 

 broken up by the action of others. This is the element of 

 disharmony or discord which is not merely an empirical 

 fact but a natural consequence of the mechanical principle 

 which runs through the real order and was, in fact, the 

 starting-point of the reasoning which led to the conception 

 of harmony. The result of this reasoning is not to extrude 

 mechanism, but to show that it must be conditioned by 

 relation to an ultimate harmony, while harmony is equally 

 conditioned by mechanism. The relation is mutual and 

 the outcome is the process of development. 



But discord or disharmony is not the same thing as dis- 

 order. There is at any time some definite configuration 

 of the then existing elements, and we may conceive this 

 configuration as at once determining the elements and 

 determined by them. But so far as it is not determined 

 by them, it is determined by its tendency towards a har- 

 monious system. The principle running through the con- 

 figuration then is not a static principle. It is an impulse 

 towards harmony and effects itself by a development which 

 transforms the conditions limiting or thwarting it, and 

 renders them subservient to its ends. Further, an impulse 

 to an end implies something of the nature of Mind, and 

 we are thus led back to the same result which we reached 

 by conceiving Reality as a whole conditioned by an element 

 of value. We are led to conceive a mind limited by its 

 own constitutive conditions and making its way by trans- 



