62 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



It is not the resultant of physio-chemical forces, but 

 of the directing idea behind them. The inward life 

 of ideals, the purposes, the loyalties, of the com- 

 ponent elements, determine the outward life of 

 forms, customs and institutions of the larger unit. 

 Through the realisation of individuality on the part 

 of its elements, is established the form of that or- 

 ganic unity which is the end of the involution. 

 Herein lies the strongest argument to be found for 

 the desirability of democratic over other institutions. 



For the hypothesis of involution, personality 

 is a creative purpose, acting through a hierarchal 

 series to the end that the series shall attain the unity 

 of a synthetic whole. Being is not something com- 

 plete and static, and therefore separate from mat- 

 ter, but is a process of becoming. Matter and con- 

 cept are relative terms, neither of which may exist 

 without the other. Matter is the involutionary 

 process looked at from the side of potentiality of 

 that which is as yet unrealised, but which has the 

 possibility of the unification. Form, or the concept, 

 is the same process seen from the side of actuality 

 the unification realised; it is the inner purpose or 

 idea expressing itself concretely in material form. 

 The transition from the potential, the differentiated, 

 to the actual, the integrated, is involution. 



Being, therefore, for involution, as for Aristotle, 

 is not something apart from the phenomenal world, 

 but is its entelechy a possibility made real, the 



