GEORGE THOMAS WHITE PATRICK 129 



to be subject to mechanical laws, neither are they gov- 

 erned by psychological laws. Though they may be 

 grasped only by mathematical thought, there is no 

 evidence that they are themselves of the nature of 

 thought. To import into them anything of a psychical 

 character would be wholly gratuitous, having no sup- 

 port from present-day science. It would be only a 

 theory put forward on the ground that we need some- 

 thing psychical in the original substance of nature in 

 order to explain how the psychical arises in nature. 



But we know now that it is not necessary, if we 

 would confirm the reality of the mind and the spirit- 

 uality of the world, to import these qualities into the 

 elements out of which the world is made. The farther 

 back we go into the elemental nature of things the 

 more rigidly mathematical it all becomes. If we seek 

 for vital things, for life and mind, for love and beauty, 

 for justice and intelligence, we must look forward, not 

 backward. We have come to believe that evolution is 

 a creative process, that the real things of the world, 

 the significant things, are not the elements out of 

 which the structures are made but the structures them- 

 selves — the wholes rather than the parts. The ele- 

 mentalism of the nineteenth century is giving place to 

 the organic view of the twentieth century, and to re- 

 newed studies into the meaning of evolution. 



Recent theories of evolution have departed so far 

 from Darwin's views that the supposed mechanistic 

 implications of Darwinism have lost much of their 

 force. In fact, the new theories of emergent and 

 creative evolution have virtually made obsolescent the 

 ancient and unlnstructlve controversy between the ma- 



