284 The Unity of the Organism 



shall pass more freely than ever from one phase or aspect 

 to another, over the entire gamut of psychic life both in the 

 individual and in the animal kingdom. If facts of my own 

 subjective life will serve my purpose, I shall be as free to 

 requisition them as to requisition facts of any phase or as- 

 pect of my objective life. If the ethical or esthetic or social 

 attributes of the human animal will best illuminate a point, 

 these shall be brought in with as little misgiving as will be 

 anatomical or embryological or physiological or instinctive 

 attributes. 



So great store do I lay on this catholicity of attitude 

 toward psychic life, that I shall show by a single instance 

 that at least a few other present-day zoologists have some- 

 what similar feelings about the zoological character of psy- 

 chical phenomena. Referring to the controversies which 

 have inevitably arisen over the problem of instinct, W. M. 

 Wheeler says that such controversy "is pardonable, at least 

 to some extent, since the subject itself presents no less than 

 four aspects, according as it is studied from the ethological, 

 physiological, psychological or metaphysical points of view." 

 "From the first two of these," the author continues, "in- 

 stinct is open to objective biological study in the form of 

 the 'instinct actions.' These may be studied by the physiol- 

 ogist merely as a regularly coordinated series of movements 

 depending on changes in the tissues and organs, and by the 

 ethologist to the extent that they tend to bring the organism 

 into effective relationship with its living and inorganic en- 

 vironment. But that these movements have a deeper origin 

 in psychological changes may be inferred on the basis of 

 analogy from our own subjective experience which shows us 

 our instincts arising as impulses and cravings, the so-called 

 'instinct-feelings'; and these in turn yield abundant material 

 for metaphysical and ethical speculation." From the 

 context of these sentences we may infer that Wheeler rec- 

 ognizes that the four aspects mentioned under which the 



