PHYSIOLOGICAL 407 



neuro-central, i.e. physiological and psychological together; as 

 every skilled and cheering nurse is ever helping to re-establish ? 



We are thus not here seeking to separate organic and psychic 

 life; on the contrary, despite the intellectual convenience — and 

 often the practical necessity — of looking at life's forms and mani- 

 festations by turns from the physiological point of view and from 

 the psychological as well, we are ever seeking to realise their unity; 

 without which body is but corpse for post-mortem examination, 

 while mind or psyche vanishes beyond our experience or recall. 



We can neither fully accept Descartes' view of "animals as 

 automata" nor the essentially kindred presentment so ably and 

 experimentally argued for by Loeb and others; for we hold their 

 "mechanistic dogma" as but a half-truth, a perspective of physio- 

 logical value so far as it goes, but at once due to and limited by the 

 mechanistic advance so characteristic of our times. Nor can we 

 fully follow W. McDougall through his ably argued case for Anim- 

 ism; and we must postpone for a subsequent chapter an outline of 

 that doctrine of psychophysical Interaction — say, rather, inter- 

 action of Biopsychosis and Psychobiosis in vital and rhythmic 

 unity — which is the best that we can offer. So enough here to recall 

 the illustration of the convex yet also concave aspects of a circle or 

 other curve; for on each aspect we can so far specialise in geometric 

 thought, as for chords within and tangents without; yet thereafter 

 and more clearly harmonise all we have separately learned. 



But this commits us to a frankly panpsychic view of organic 

 life; and even for plant as well as animal: and why not? From the 

 familiar life-experience of sleep, with its lapse from consciousness 

 into the sub-conscious, to the subtle and fertile investigation of 

 this latter which has been one of the most noteworthy advances of 

 the past generation or more, we no longer see any reason for refusing 

 that something of psyche to the plant-world as well, which child 

 and woman, poet and mystic have ever granted to tree and flower. 

 We no longer see a Dryad inhabiting the tree; that poetic vision 

 corresponded to the duahsm of separate body and psyche which 

 neither biology nor psychology confirms: but we do see the tree as 

 itself the Dryad; since growing, breathing, moving, and sensitive 

 to light and more — sensitive, as Darwin long ago showed for his 

 insectivorous plants, beyond the utmost limits of our own con- 

 scious sensibilities. Other investigators have confirmed these subtle- 

 ties of plant-life, and Bose yet further experimentally demon- 

 strates and extends them, so that in what seems the most slow and 

 gentle of all organic movements, his multi-millionfold experimental 

 magnification shows an energy of growth in rising pulsations which 

 give an impression of urgency of life-effort, as vivid as can be those 

 of animal life to ordinary eyes. Conspicuous movements, as of the 

 sensitive plants — when all is said for their physical processes, and 



