324 The Unity of the Organism 



phase of lower conscious life. 



The reader should not forget the insistence throughout 

 our presentation of these antagonistic phenomena, that al- 

 ways the oppositions and antagonisms and competitions are 

 fundamentally constitutive as to the normal organism. Even 

 the most pronounced of them are yet in the interest of the 

 organism as a whole. They are always partial phenomena 

 relative to the whole organism. They have evolved in strict 

 accordance with and sub-ordination to the fundamental na- 

 ture of the organism in its totality. The opposing muscles 

 of our limbs can not break or tear one another under normal 

 conditions. Even antagonisms among the parts of the or- 

 ganism are possible because the parts belong to the organism. 

 The antagonisms of the parts do not produce the organism, 

 primarily, but are themselves produced by the organism, or 

 at least, are a portion of the means or methods by which the 

 organism lives and enlarges, develops and functions. All this, 

 be it noticed, holds not merely as touching purely physical 

 organization * but as to the entire gamut of psychic life, 

 at least up to and including instinctive and emotional life. 



Support of the Hypothesis by the Physico-Chemical Con- 

 ception of the Organism 



This prepares us for the final step of switching the discus- 

 sion from the psycho-conscious aspect of life to the bio- 

 physico-chemical aspect. The place in our discussion to 

 which this return naturally takes us is that wherein we con- 

 sidered the organism's chemical nature as interpreted by phy- 

 sical chemistry. That interpretation has been presented by 

 several physiologists but with special insight and cogency by 

 F. G. Hopkins. For example, our citation in Chapter 4 of 

 the statement that the conception of the organism as a 



* Recall the discussions of growth and chemico-functional integration, 

 chapters 17, 18, and 19. 



