HOLISM IN PSYCHOLOGY When we come to apply the above ideas and principles to psychology and ethics, we find that the results of holism are in close agreement with the facts. In both we find a continual epi genesis as well as a whole-making tendency associated with mental activity. There is an increasing building-up of higher patterns out of lower ones. Thus on the basis of neural sense-stimuli, syn thetic sensations with a psychic character are built ; sensations again blend into higher perceptions in which it is no longer possible to disentangle the fused sensations. Similarly concepts, judg ments, general laws and principles are reached as the result of the synthesis and fusion of innumerable percepts, images, concepts and judgments. Elements of feeling and emotion and will are added, and purposes, rules and ideals are evolved which embrace vast details and effect ever more complex pattern-wholes. Nothing could be more wrong than the old discarded association psy chology which viewed mental products as aggregates mechanically formed out of small atoms or items of experience. There is no such atomicity about mind; its action is throughout massive and holistic. Even below the level of conscious mind the psychic proc esses have this massive and consolidative character, as we see in habits and instincts. On the conscious level, in spite of the analytic character of intelligence, the underlying and controlling processes are holistic, and systematically fuse lower structures of experience into higher, more complicated patterns, which have the character of wholes, irreducible to their original components. Mental activity is throughout characterized by epigenesis and wholeness. The results of the new "Gestalt" or configuration psychology have added force to these considerations. Research has shown clearly that mental activity in the higher animals as well as humans produce patterns or structures of experience, which behave as wholes, and enter into other experiences as un divided and indivisible wholes. In fact the broken pattern is dead and ineffective. Like a period or a rhythm, the mental pattern has only value and effect as a whole.
It must, however, be recognized that mental patterns, however holistic in structure, are not true wholes on a par with natural wholes such as organisms. Technically it would be better to call them holoids, as they have the structure and many of the char acters of wholes, but lack the individual existence and power of self-reproduction which natural wholes possess. Their power how ever must not be underrated. Mental wholes, such as the blended percepts and concepts which denote objects, can be quite indi vidual and distinct ; while ideas and ideals when fused with emo tion may attain a force which gives them more than the power of real things. The great slogans of science and politics and reli gion are dynamic realities and have repeatedly produced the most far-reaching effects on history. As higher animals we find a nat ural environment for our development. As mental and ethical beings we create our own spiritual environment which in the end becomes to us more real and valuable than our natural envi ronment. Nothing could show more significantly the creative whole-making power of human personality. Thus arise the vast holistic structures of science, art, literature and religion, with the still greater wholes of truth, goodness, beauty and love pointing he way to the future.
If the theory of holism is capable of illuminating the field of psychology and the other mental sciences, no less fruitful will be its application to the social sciences. The great structures of the State, the Church, and all the other insti tutions of society bear testimony to the whole-making power of human personality. In anthropology, sociology and politics, hol ism will not only simplify theory, but also bring those young sci ences much nearer to the actual facts. The facts are essentially holistic and holism supplies the key for their interpretation. "We are members one of another" expresses truly the holistic nature of society. Here too, however, a word of warning is necessary. Just as in mental science, we are dealing here also with holoids rather than wholes. Society, the State, the Church and other social institutions are not real wholes, but structures on the anal ogy and with many of the t4roperties of real wholes. The indi viduals who compose these structures are the real wholes, whose personalities are not suppressed or merged in the larger struc tures. On the contrary, the really important factor is and remains human personality, and its great creations in society have for their highest purpose the fostering and spiritual advancement of this supreme whole of personality which has been achieved in the course of evolution. This is not a mere matter of speculation, but one of the most far-reaching practical importance for the ordering of human society and the position of the individual in it.
Going still farther afield, the question is raised whether reality itself is one and a whole, or whether it is a pluralistic structure in which individuality has full scope and an assured future. Here one can but ask the question without attempting to answer it_ Perhaps in the end it will be found that no answer is possible. This is not a completed universe, but a universe in the making; and there may be wholes great and small in the making beyond the comprehension of our limited faculties. The destiny of the individual lies beyond human ken. Here is really a case for "natural piety." Forms and Monads.—The concept of wholes is by no means unknown to philosophy or even to science, but no systematic use of it has been made by either of them. Science has on the whole followed the clue of mechanism, but is now getting to its limits. Philosophy more than once definitely approached the concept of the whole without however appreciating its real value. Thus Aristotle's remarkable doctrine of forms as the shaping element of matter is not far removed from the concept of the whole in relation to its parts. The monads of Leibnitz, again, approached the central concept of holism, but the time was not ripe for a full recognition, and the theory remained a metaphysical specula tion. Holism is to-day in a happier position. It enthrones the idea of the whole in a setting prepared by science itself, and it appears therefore as a practical way out of very real difficulties both for science and philosophy.
Although the theory of holism frankly accepts the material basis of the world and recog nizes the natural order as idealism cannot, yet it fully justifies the claims of the spirit in the interpretation of the world. The concept of the whole enables us to overcome some of the most difficult and poignant contrasts in life and thought. We are con stantly confronted with the opposition between matter and spirit, between the temporal and the eternal, between the phenomenal and the real. Holism shows these opposites as reconciled and har monized in the whole. It shows whole and parts as aspects of each other; the finite is identified with the infinite, the particular with the universal. Eternity is contained in time, matter is the vesture and vehicle of spirit, reality is not a transcendent other-worldly order, but is immanent in the phenomenal. To attain to reality, we need not fly away from appearance; each little centre and whole in the world, however lowly, is a laboratory in which time is transmuted into eternity, the phenomenal into the real. The wondrous truth is everywhere ; the plummet let down anywhere will reach to unknown depths; any cross-section in the world of appearance will reveal the very texture of reality. Everywhere the whole, even the least and most insignificant apparently, is the real wonder, the miracle which holds the secrets for which we are groping in thought and conduct. There is the within which is the beyond. To be a whole and to live in the whole becomes the supreme principle, from which all the highest ethical and spiritual rules (such as the golden rule) follow. And it links these rules with the nature of things, for not only do goodness, love and justice derive from it, but also beauty and truth, which are rooted in the whole and have no meaning apart from it. The whole is in fact both the source and the principle of explanation of all our highest ideals, no less than of the earlier evolutionary structures already discussed.
Driesch, Philosophy of Organism (1908) ; Bibliography.--Hans Driesch, Philosophy of Organism (1908) ; Problem of Individuality (1914) ; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1928) ; J. S. Haldane, Mechanism, Life and Personality (1921) ; Lloyd Morgan, Emergent Evolution (1923) ; C. D. Broad, Mind and its Place in Nature (1925) ; J. E. Boodin, Cosmic Evolution (1925) ; J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution (1926) ; A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1926) ; Lloyd Morgan, Life, Mind, and Spirit (1926) ; Hans Driesch, Metaphysik der Natur (1927). (J. C. SMV.)
