Psychic Integration 



'To my mind," says Royce, "an interesting side-light has 

 been shed upon the well-known controversies between the 

 associationists on the one hand, and the school of Wundt 

 and the partisans of 'mental activities' generally, on the 

 other, by the stress that Professor Loeb has recently laid 

 upon the part that what he calls 'tropisms' play in the life 

 of animals of all grades." 4 



Then after telling in a few sentences what tropisms are, 

 Royce continues : "Now it is especially notable that the 'tro- 

 pisms' of Loeb are not, like the 'reflex actions' of the theories, 

 modes of activity primarily determined by the functions of 

 specific nerve-centres. Furthermore, they are more general 

 and elemental in their character than are any of the acquired 

 habits of an organism." (At this point Royce takes up, for 

 a moment, a matter to one side of my main purpose, namely 

 the problem of "self-activity" and "spontaneity" ; so I ven- 

 ture to change somewhat the order and emphasis of his ar- 

 gument.) "Now it has occurred to me to maintain, in sub- 

 stance, that the factor in mental life which Wundt's school 

 defines as 'Apperception' . . . may well be treated, from the 

 purely psychological point of view, as the conscious aspect 

 or accompaniment of a collection of tendencies of the type 

 which Loeb has called 'tropisms.' 



Then we have : "Wundt has insisted that his 'Appercep- 

 tion' is no disembodied spiritual entity. I conceive that Loeb 

 has indicated to us, in the concept of the 'tropism,' how 

 a power more or less directive of the course of our asso- 

 ciations, and more general than is any of the tendencies 

 that are due, in us, to habit, or to specific experience, can 

 find its embodiment in the most elemental activities of our 

 organism." 



What, now, is the bearing of this idea of Royce's on the 

 main theme of this chapter, the organism's unity as mani- 

 fested in and influenced by its psychic life? As an initial 

 step toward answering this question, the reader is asked to 



