362 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



Development in general then is an extension of har- 

 mony in activity. 1 In the undeveloped state forces are 

 locked in conflict, they cancel one another. There is 

 mutual arrest and stagnation. The first act of develop- 

 ment may be considered as liberation of energy, through 

 a rearrangement which enables colliding forces each to pro- 

 duce a definite series of changes, but if there is to be true 

 development and not mere disruption the forces set free 

 still remain related. They act on one another only not so 

 as to cancel one another, but so as to engender the cor- 

 related movements of an orderly structure. This is the 

 second act. But some structures are of organic type 

 because there exist elements capable of so working together 

 as to maintain and develop one another. As long as they 

 remain separate these forces are either held cancelled by 

 others or operate on their environment in mechanical 

 fashion. As soon as in the continual movement and redis- 

 tribution of things each meets with its mate they form a 

 whole of the organic type with the power of maintaining 

 itself by plastic adaptations. The adaptation enables it to 

 absorb or subordinate external sources of energy, and so to 

 grow. This is the third act. But each organism still 

 acts indifferently, i.e. mechanically, on the remainder 

 until either (i) it meets its 'fellow, 5 when once more a 

 higher unity is formed, or (2) in the process of its growth 

 and internal modification it reaches a stage at which it is 

 fitted to act in harmony with others to which it was previ- 

 ously indifferent. In either case the lower organisms are 

 the basis of the higher, and development involves a repeated 

 synthesis and harmony, which constitute the remaining acts 

 of the drama. 



Lastly, as has been shown above, harmony is not only a 

 product but a condition of development. Any structures 

 which are incompatible with one another must cancel out 

 and destroy one another as they come into contact, and all 



1 As opposed to the development of a particular thing, which means 

 simply the more complete realisation of that thing. In the case of 

 Mind as that which is based on a harmony and is the basis of a fuller 

 harmony, the two meanings express different aspects of the same process, 

 the fuller realisation of the potentialities of Mind being effect and cause 

 of a deeper and more extended harmony. 





