CHAPTER XIV 
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 
In the preceding chapters an attempt has been made 
to show the physiological relation and continuity between 
the structural and functional development of the nervous 
system and the primary factors in organismic pattern, 
the physiological gradients. From the viewpoint which 
underlies the book the organism is regarded as represent- 
ing essentially a behavior pattern, arising in protoplasm 
in response to its relations with the external world, and 
particularly the relations concerned in excitation and its 
effects. When we take all the facts into consideration, 
it is impossible, I believe, to reach any other conclusion 
than that the organism is such a pattern. The organ- 
ism is without significance or meaning of any kind, 
except in relation to an external world, and particularly 
to the factors in that world which bring about excitation. 
I have endeavored to show that organismic pattern is 
primarily excitatory and transmissive in character, and 
that the material exchange between protoplasm and 
environment is of secondary importance, so far as this 
pattern is concerned, though necessary of course for the 
continued existence of protoplasm. 
From this point of view the nervous system repre- 
sents physiologically the development and complication 
of these fundamental excitatory features of organismic 
pattern and their transmissive effects in those proto- 
plasms so constituted that such development is possible. 
Anatomically, the nervous system is the record in those 
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