BASIS OF PSYCHICAL-SOCIAL INDIVIDUALITY 625 



on a specific substratum. The regeneration of lost portions in a primitive 

 organism is attributed to the initiating action of a psychical process cor- 

 responding to memory and thought in higher organisms. Adaptive features 

 characteristic of a species are due to the action of a memory-like agent, and 

 instincts are remembrances of formerly purposeful actions. 



Similarly, a mneme-like agent would direct the return of certain animals at 

 definite periods of their life to the place where they had been at a preceding 

 phase, and the sentimental attachment of human beings to their place of 

 birth and to their nation would be an analogous process. In like manner, the 

 habits of social insects are compared to human social modes of living and 

 institutions. But in the origin of the latter there enter thoughts, suggestions, 

 and many other factors so loosely connected with each other that they 

 appear as accidental. Human social life is modifiable. Men may even dispense 

 with social life almost altogether and live as more or less isolated beings. 

 Human institutions are plastic, although ultimately they also may have their 

 roots in reflex systems, while insect organization depends almost exclusively 

 upon the action of reflex systems which are non-plastic, fixed in character. 

 Thus complex social phenomena, in which modifiable suggestions of various 

 kinds and experiences in the social struggle due to variable cultural con- 

 stellations play a prominent part, are considered as closely related to the 

 reflex actions of more primitive organisms, and the hypothesis is introduced 

 that the complex factors which are potent in human beings are likewise 

 potent in much more primitive organisms. Instead of explaining the simple 

 by the complex, it seems more promising as a method of investigative pro- 

 cedure to attempt to discover the more simple components in the complex 

 processes and to reduce, therefore, the latter to the former. On these alter- 

 native modes of procedure seem to hinge the chief differences between 

 mechanism and vitalism in the interpretation of living organisms. 



A further assumption holds that there is a non-causal, irrational com- 

 ponent, inaccessible to scientific analysis, in human behavior. A part which 

 is not yet analyzed and still unknown is identified with the unknowable, and 

 the unknowable is considered as not subject to the regularities existing 

 elsewhere in nature and therefore as irrational from the human point of view. 

 Support for this belief is sought in the lack of determinism which char- 

 acterizes subatomic phenomena, where it is possible to determine either 

 position or velocity of the constituents of an atom, but not both at the same 

 time, and related to it is the assumption that because fictitious statements 

 play a temporary role in science and because the symbols we use are only 

 imperfect representations of reality — behaving in certain respects like 

 metaphors with an "as if" character — all our conclusions are equally fictitious. 

 The entelechy of Driesch would also constitute a metaphysical factor direct- 

 ing organisms in general as well as human personality, and even some 

 experimental biologists, who analyze life processes in accordance with 

 mechanistic principles postulate in addition the action of specific vital forces 

 which are inaccessible to experimental methods. 



The existence of agents other than those physical-chemical factors known 



