ENDS AND MEANS
ceived by our senses, is found to be correlated with the
number and the arrangement of ultimate units of energy.
The material universe is pictured by science as composed
of a diversity of patterns of a single substance. Common
sense arbitrarily selects certain packets of patterned energy*-
units and regards them as separate, individual existents.
This proceeding would seem to be entirely unjustifiable.
So-called separate, individual existents are dependent upon
one another for their very being. They are interconnected
by a network of relationships—electro-magnetic, gravi-
tational, chemical and, in the case of sentient beings, mental.
That network gives them their being and reality. An indi-
vidual existent is nothing except in so far as it is a part -of
a larger whole. In other words, it is not an individual
existent. The things we ordinarily call objects or* indi-
viduals—a tree, a man, a table—are not 'concrete realities,'
as the romantic, anti-intellectuals would have us believe.
They are abstractions from a reality that consists, as sys-
tematic investigation reveals, of a network of relations
between the interdependent parts of an incalculably greater
whole. A man, for example, is what he is only in virtue of
his relationship with the surrounding universe. His entire
existence is conditioned by his neighbourhood to the earth,
with its powerful gravitational field; radiations of many
kinds make him dependent on distant heavenly bodies; he
is the locus of a continuous process of chemical exchange;
mentally, he is related to and conditioned by the minds of
his contemporaries and predecessors. The common-sense
claim that we live among, and ourselves are, independent
existents is based upon ignorance. In present circum-
stances, however, those who insist on talking of men and
women as though they were * concrete* independent exist-
ents can excuse themselves on the ground that such a
description, though incorrect, is less misleading than that
of the political theorists who consider that human beings
254