CHAPTER XIV 

 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 



In the preceding chapters an attempt has been made 

 to show the physiological relation and continuity between 

 the structural and functional development of the nervous 

 system and the primary factors in organismic pattern, 

 the physiological gradients. From the viewpoint which 

 underlies the book the organism is regarded as represent- 

 ing essentially a behavior pattern, arising in protoplasm 

 in response to its relations with the external world, and 

 particularly the relations concerned in excitation and its 

 effects. When we take all the facts into consideration, 

 it is impossible, I believe, to reach any other conclusion 

 than that the organism is such a pattern. The organ- 

 ism is without significance or meaning of any kind, 

 except in relation to an external world, and particularly 

 to the factors in that world which bring about excitation. 

 I have endeavored to show that organismic pattern is 

 primarily excitatory and transmissive in character, and 

 that the material exchange between protoplasm and 

 environment is of secondary importance, so far as this 

 pattern is concerned, though necessary of course for the 

 continued existence of protoplasm. 



From this point of view the nervous system repre- 

 sents physiologically the development and complication 

 of these fundamental excitatory features of organismic 

 pattern and their transmissive effects in those proto- 

 plasms so constituted that such development is possible. 

 Anatomically, the nervous system is the record in those 



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