xix SELF-CONSCIOUS DEVELOPMENT 445 



which will connect it with Reality as a whole. For the 

 cause of the origin of a process, then, we may look in two 

 directions, to its results or to its antecedents. If we look 

 to the latter, we are clearly going outside the process. 

 But if the process is one in which the whole nature of our 

 ultimate system is to be expressed, we cannot go outside 

 it without denying the claim of our system to be complete. 

 We are therefore thrown forward towards the results of 

 this system. But neither can the purpose achieved by the 

 process stand alone, for the necessity of the process must 

 also be made plain. If an unconditional purpose were the 

 secret of the universe, there could be no explanation of 

 the means, the process, and the effort through which the 

 purpose is realised. 



6. From the conception of purpose, then, we are again 

 thrown back on origins, just as these throw us forward to 

 their purpose. We have, in short, to conceive a single 

 principle not realised in full at any one phase, but pervad- 

 ing the whole world-process. In this principle, the possible 

 and the actual in a sense come together, for what it is to 

 be is an integral condition that goes to make the world 

 what it is. We cannot take any phase of Reality as an 

 absolute starting-point and regard it as determining every- 

 thing that follows upon it mechanically, or everything that 

 precedes it teleologically. If we conceive any process as 

 making up the life of an intelligible world-whole, we must 

 conceive its origin and issue as dependent on and implying 

 one another. That is, we must conceive it as determined 

 organically. And the word is the more appropriate 

 because, just as we saw at first that the relations of a 

 comprehensive plan to its elements could be figured in the 

 penetration of all the organic elements by the life of the 

 whole, so now when we treat the plan as the plan of a 

 process, we find its nearest analogy in the struggle of life 

 within its physical conditions to realise its full nature. 

 The life that, determined on one side by its constituent 

 elements, is equally determined from the first by its own 

 possibility and promise, displays a history in which end 

 and origin, broad principles and detailed conditions, form 

 a systematic whole. 



