186 The Unity of the Organism 



Brain was published,* Sherrington's really epochal book 

 being especially notable among these later productions. 

 Some of the most fundamental views and arguments pre- 

 sented by Sherrington and others are irreconcilable with 

 conceptions which are at the very center of the elementalist 

 philosophy, and which find repeated expression in Loeb's 

 writings on the nervous system. It is, consequently, a mat- 

 ter of surprise and disappointment that a volume devoted 

 expressly to the organism as a whole should leave almost 

 unmentioned the very organ-system which is most distinctive 

 of the organism thus viewed, especially since this leaves un- 

 touched clearly formulated theoretical issues of cardinal 

 importance. 



Likewise the disposal of Cannon's work, upon which we 

 have drawn so largely in the preceding chapter, by five 

 lines in The Organism as a Whole 1 is truly astonishing ! 



Indeed, so striking is the defectiveness of The Organism 

 as a Whole in this respect that one can not help recognizing 

 that despite its author's statement in the preface as to his 

 intentions, the omission amounts to an evasion even though 

 not so intended. 



However, the expressed statement by Loeb of the place he 

 wishes the Comparative Physiology of the Brain to hold 

 in his interpretation of the organism has great usefulness 

 to us : it is tantamount to an assurance that the views set 

 forth in the Comparative Physiology have undergone no 

 essential change because of the discoveries and arguments 

 produced since the publication of that work. So our exam- 

 ination of Loeb's position on this important matter must 

 concern itself largely with facts and views contained in 

 the Comparative Physiology of the Brain. 



* The copyright of Comparative Physiology of the Brain bears the 

 date 1900, while The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, by 

 Sherrington, than which few more important books on the system have 

 been written, was copyrighted in 1906. 



