Sketch of an Organismal Theory of Consciousness 34*9 



Summed-up Statement of Justification of the Hypothesis 



The final gathering-up-and-putting-together may now be 

 made of all that has been said about the physico-chemical 

 aspect of the organism on the one hand, and about its psy- 

 chical aspect on the other. That is to say, we are now ready 

 to epitomize the results of our examination of the ancient 

 and honorable but withal unsolved problem of how Body and 

 Soul go together. As regards "body" or "the physical" we 

 have been led to the physico-chemical conception of the or- 

 ganism as a well-nigh inconceivably complex mass of sub- 

 stances, mostly in the colloidal state, operating as a system 

 of phases in dynamic or constantly changing equilibrium. 

 As regards "soul" or "the psychical," we have found also a 

 series of phases of activities, namely the phases of intellect 

 and reason, those of instinct, those of feeling and emotion, 

 those of the will, those of the tropisms and the "simple re- 

 flexes," and finally those of simple protoplasmic response. 

 According to my hypothesis, the phases of the bio-chemico- 

 physical sort and the phases of the psychical sort have com- 

 mon ground in the organism as a whole, the phases of in- 

 tellect and reason corresponding to the cerebro-spinal nerv- 

 ous system ; the phase of instinct corresponding probably to 

 the autonomic nervous system ; the phases of feeling and emo- 

 tion corresponding mainly to the glandular and visceral sys- 

 tems; those of the will to the body-muscular system; those 

 of the tropisms and simple reflexes to the receptor-conductor- 

 effector systems; and finally those of simple protoplasmic 

 response to the fundamental protoplasmic mechanism of 

 response, whatever its structure. 



According to the scheme presented in the sketch and 

 summed up here, just as physical functioning and physical 

 form reach back to the very dawning of animal life, both in 

 the individual and in the race or type, so consciousness with 

 its nether limits in what, following the terminology of em- 



