308 The Unity of the Organism 



lessness," adopting Royce's terminology, for internal or sub- 

 jective reality ; while the philosopher of the schools is some- 

 what deficient in restlessness for external or objective reality? 

 We could say with almost literal chemical accuracy that the 

 curiosity and eagerness of the naturalist for yet unobserved 

 objective truth is due to an unsatisfied affinity which is weak, 

 or in some instances, wholly lacking, in the subjective idealist. 

 The facts which seem to justify our chemico-organismal 

 hypothesis of conscious psychic life, seem also to imply a 

 complete interpenetration of objective science and idealistic 

 philosophy. 



As to the Lowest Terms of Self -Consciousness 



Let us now veer our course in examining self-conscious life, 

 and see what can be made out about its roots and rootlets 

 instead of about its fruitage. 



We are often reminded that our knowledge about our in- 

 ternal organs, our heart, liver, lungs, et cetera, comes only 

 through observations by the anatomist and physiologist; 

 that we are quite unconscious of these organs in our own 

 bodies, especially if they are working normally. Now I 

 point out that to be perceptually conscious of a liver, let us 

 say, as a specialized morphological entity performing its 

 appropriate functions, is a very different matter from being 

 conscious of those primal, undifferentiated processes which 

 are basal to life itself, and so are common to all the tissues 

 whether liver, muscle, brain, or what not, so long as they are 

 actually living. That that which is truly organic, in the 

 sense of pertaining to the fully constituted organism, must 

 be regarded from this standpoint as well as from the stand- 

 point of their final state of differentiation, is one of the 

 common-places of modern biology. Let a person in as near- 

 ly perfect health as he ever experiences, do his best to elimi- 

 nate all external and internal stimuli of his specialized 



