CHAPTER VII 



THE AWAKENING OF PERSONALITY 



IN the lowest stages of organic life we find the organism 

 acting as a whole or unit, and as a whole or unit mani- 

 festing traces of freedom in its activities. Between its 

 various parts there is a coordination of process that 

 makes it obviously individual, while yet there is a large 

 measure of dependence on the stimulus of outside cir- 

 cumstance. 



In the individual organism there is evident some de- 

 gree of choice, some first faint foreshadowing of volition, 

 though not conscious volition. Even a paramoecium 

 can store up habit-memories through repeated experi- 

 ence; even a crayfish can be taught to discriminate 

 between possible alternatives 1 . That this discrimination 

 exists means something else besides. There must be 

 some trace of freedom, or true choice becomes impos- 

 sible; and true choice, though in a very limited field, 

 there appears to be. The mechanistic theory of tro- 

 pisms, so dear to the German physiologist, who contends 

 that all activities, from the simplest to the highest, can 

 be interpreted in terms of chemical and physical stimuli, 

 has received so many rude shocks that even from the 

 point of view of natural science it would appear unten- 

 able; while the whole mechanistic theory is seen to be 

 hopelessly self-contradictory when it is examined in 

 relation to all the facts of experience, as Haldane, for 

 example, admirably shows 2 , not only because it is based 

 entirely on personal inferences and judgments from the 



1 For an interesting summary of our present knowledge of the 

 psychology of the lower animals see E. M. Smith, Mind in 

 A nimals. 



1 Mechanism, Lift and Personality. J. S. Haldane. 



