Psychic Integration 237 



than Royce discovered about the relation between apperccp- 

 tive processes, as Wundt conceives them, and the processes 

 known as tropisms. 



Anticipating our results, and stating them in the most 

 general terms possible, we may say that the "apperceptive 

 synthesis" of Wundt, and what may be called tropistic syn- 

 thesis, have a common ground in the kind of synthesis which 

 is the very essence of that kind of organization to which the 

 term life is applied. To be alive is to be an organic in- 

 dividual; to be an organic individual is to be an indi- 

 vidual that perpetually synthesizes itself from substances 

 extraneous to itself (food, in the narrower sense, and 

 oxygen) ; and to be a psychically endowed individual 

 is to be an individual which in addition to synthesizing 

 a physical nature from the substances mentioned, synthesizes 

 a psychical nature from physical and chemical contacts and 

 interactions between the individual and the external world, 

 the physical contacts being called stimuli. Viewing the 

 matter thus, it is seen to be -highly probable that in its ulti- 

 mate essences the dependence of the psychical nature of the 

 organism on stimuli is connected, directly and inseparably, 

 with the dependence of its material nature on material nu- 

 triment. 



We should, I think, be surprised were a demonstration 

 to be produced that psychic life has as little connection with 

 metabolic processes as the text-books of psychology would 

 lead one to suppose. Every modern psychologist, like every 

 modern biologist, accepts, unquestioningly I presume, the 

 conception that in some way the psychic life is no less de- 

 pendent on the nutritive substances and processes than is 

 the physical life. Yet that "some way" appears to be gen- 

 erally regarded as so remote and obscure as to be beyond the 

 reach of profitable treatment by psychological science, judg- 

 ing from the considerable number of standard text-books 

 which I have consulted on the point. In only one of these 



