276 The Unity of the Organism 



tropisms indeed the abstract conception of the "simple 

 reflex," though not, perhaps, involving the conception of the 

 organism as a whole, yet is not comprehensible on elemen- 

 talistic principles, as our examination of Sherrington's in- 

 vestigations revealed. And such phenomena as those of the 

 spreading and compounding of reflexes are quite incompre- 

 hensible except on the organismal principle, even though the 

 whole organism may not be involved, observably at least, in 

 particular reflex acts. 



Specificity of Subrational Psychic Life 



The concluding section of this descriptive chapter on 

 psychic integratedness must be devoted to the specificity, 

 not to say individuality, of animal behavior in all its phases. 

 The vast body of trustworthy detailed knowledge now in our 

 possession justifies, I am quite sure, the following general- 

 ized statement under this head: It is exactly on the psychic 

 side of animal life, psychic being taken in the broadest sense, 

 that animals are most differentiated from one another, both 

 as to individuals and as to species. 



Taxonomic zoology is based almost entirely on structural 

 attributes of animals. This results from reasons that are 

 obvious, speaking generally, and constitutes a justification 

 of the fact from a practical standpoint. Nevertheless the 

 purely practical advantages of the classificatory systems as 

 they have been built up have been, and are, gained at the 

 expense of several rather serious disadvantages. One of 

 these is, as advance of knowledge leads us to realize, that our 

 well-nigh exclusive attention to structural differences and 

 likenesses has tended strongly to divert attention from func- 

 tional differences and likenesses. It is of fundamental impor- 

 tance for a truly comprehensive science of organic beings, 

 that is, for a philosophical biology, to regard our synoptic 

 classifications not as a final result of knowledge-getting, but 



