GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 269 
protoplasms capable of developing and maintaining such 
a record, of the effects of the excitatory and transmissive 
processes upon the protoplasm. No other viewpoint 
yet attained affords any basis for the interpretation in 
physiological terms of the origin and development of 
the nervous system. If we maintain that organismic 
pattern is not fundamentally a relation of excitation 
and transmission, the appearance of the nervous system 
in development as the first definitive organ and its func- 
tion as the chief organ of integration and relation in the 
organism must remain scientifically completely insoluble 
problems. Such a conception of the organism, carried 
to its logical conclusion, practically forces us to regard 
the nervous system as functionally and structurally 
something new appearing in the organism at a certain 
stage and without any pre-existing physiological basis. 
In other words, from this viewpoint the nervous system 
appears essentially as a special creation superimposed 
upon the organism and falls into the same category with 
Driesch's entelechy and with certain theological concep- 
tions of the soul. 
Such metaphysical difficulties are, however, avoided 
when we regard the nervous system as representing, on 
the one hand, the result and product of the primary 
excitation-transmission relations of organismic pattern, 
and, on the other, the further development of these 
relations. This conception gives us physiological con- 
tinuity from the beginning of the organism to the 
highest stages of nervous development attained in 
the individual, or, stated in still broader terms, from 
the simple physiological gradient to the ego. The domi- 
nance of the nervous system and its integrating function 
