GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 269 



protoplasms capable of developing and maintaining such 

 a record, of the effects of the excitatory and transmissive 

 processes upon the protoplasm. No other viewpoint 

 yet attained affords any basis for the interpretation in 

 physiological terms of the origin and development of 

 the nervous system. If we maintain that organismic 

 pattern is not fundamentally a relation of excitation 

 and transmission, the appearance of the nervous system 

 in development as the first definitive organ and its func- 

 tion as the chief organ of integration and relation in the 

 organism must remain scientifically completely insoluble 

 problems. Such a conception of the organism, carried 

 to its logical conclusion, practically forces us to regard 

 the nervous system as functionally and structurally 

 something new appearing in the organism at a certain 

 stage and without any pre-existing physiological basis. 

 In other words, from this viewpoint the nervous system 

 appears essentially as a special creation superimposed 

 upon the organism and falls into the same category with 

 Driesch's entelechy and with certain theological concep- 

 tions of the soul. 



Such metaphysical difficulties are, however, avoided 

 when we regard the nervous system as representing, on 

 the one hand, the result and product of the primary 

 excitation- transmission relations of organismic pattern, 

 and, on the other, the further development of these 

 relations. This conception gives us physiological con- 

 tinuity from the beginning of the organism to the 

 highest stages of nervous development attained in 

 the individual, or, stated in still broader terms, from 

 the simple physiological gradient to the ego. The domi- 

 nance of the nervous system and its integrating function 



