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them. It is not easy for me to put it clearly or for my reader to understand. But let us both do our best.

What seems to be common to all events, no matter what may be their specific character, is that which may be called passage. They pass from one phase or stage to the next. And the passage is accordant with some general method or plan which we can more or less definitely formulate. We should realize that even what we commonly call “things” are relatively persistent clusters of events in passage. They have been likened to eddies in the stream of events, or to a waterfall, where the water flows on but the cascade is permanent. What persists is some state of flowing events.

Suppose, then, that we are dealing with atoms, molecules, organisms, minds, social institutions. In all of them there is passage of events. In each there are relatively persistent states, which characterise the several members of the group—characterise each atom, or crystal, or organism, or mind. But in any given group the individual members are not all alike. Molecules are not all alike; nor are organisms or minds all alike. And we commonly say that some of them stand at a higher level, some of them stand at a lower level than others. Thus man is at a higher level and a monkey at a lower level than an ape. If we speak of the level at which any member of a group stands as its status then a man has a higher status than an ape, an ape has a higher status than a monkey, and a monkey a far higher status than an amoeba.

Of course, we have in some way to define what we mean by “higher” and “lower.” We may say—to select one character—that what is more complex is higher and what is less complex is lower. Then in this respect within each group the members may be arranged in order from the lowest to the highest. And the groups also—the atoms,