174 THE ELEMENTARY NERVOUS SYSTEM 



rcct, there is no reason to suppose that the unity of their 

 organization is necessarily of a high order, as in fact the 

 preceding accounts show. It seems quite certain that von 

 Uexkiill's description (1909) of one of these animals as 

 a bundle of reflexes is inadequate, but it is also equally 

 certain that this description is nearer the truth and cer- 

 tainly far freer from error than the picture drawn by 

 Gosse (1860) of these forms endowed with consciousness 

 and will. The facts that the pedal half of an actinian 

 may creep normally without the oral half and that the 

 oral half is responsible for the feeding activities through 

 a concourse of semi-independent parts, tentacles, oesoph- 

 agus, and so forth, make it quite obvious that the organic 

 unity of the animal as a whole is very weak. As Pieron 

 (1906 a) remarked, most parts of an actinian possess un- 

 usual autonomy. Or, to state the matter for the whole 

 animal as von Uexkiill (1909) has phrased it for the nerv- 

 ous system, the sea-anemone partakes more of the nature 

 of a sum of parts than of a unit. The harmony of action 

 that is encountered on most sides in actinian behavior is 

 in reality indicative of very little of that kind of unity 

 that pervades the individual higher animal. To speak of 

 sea-anemones as having a psychology is to use this term 

 in its very broadest sense (Pieron, 1906 a}. 



