Psychic Integration 215 



(b) The Organism an Original Datum in All Problems of 

 Psychic Life 



Another preliminary remark of high importance concerns 

 the question of what, precisely, it is with which we have to 

 do of what we start from and what is ever in sight, in the 

 discussion. Our fidelity to the organism, living in its natural 

 setting, as the foremost objective reality in this treatise, 

 prevents us ab initio from being satisfied with a Body, and 

 a Mind or Soul, as these have figured from time immemorial 

 in discourse about the higher animals, particularly about 

 man. 



If in all the world there is such a thing as objective 

 truth, what we start with and have ever to deal with in 

 studying psychic phenomena, just as in studying all other 

 phenomena of animals, are individual objects or bodies of 

 very particular construction and activity. And by no pos- 

 sibility can consistent thought and statement avoid acknowl- 

 edging that that vast assemblage of acts and other manifes- 

 tations which are called psychical are yet only part and 

 parcel of the still vaster assemblage of acts and manifesta- 

 tions presented by the very same living objects, that is, by or- 

 ganisms. Our occupation will be basally with an object, some 

 particular organism, having innumerable attributes, which 

 being classified fall rather roughly into two great groups, 

 one of which we name physical or material and the other 

 psychical or spiritual. For short, the physical or material 

 group is called the Body, while the psychical or spiritual 

 group is called the Soul or Mind. 



Our discussion, then, will never lose sight of the fact that 

 the acts with which we deal are acts of the organism and not 

 of any of its parts merely, whether these be conceived as 

 material or psychical. No matter how far particular acts 

 may be dependent upon, and so explicable by, particular 

 parts, this dependence can not in reality be the whole story, 



