302 T HE BIOC08MOS PARTICULARIZED. 



some kind of ordering, which may carry a lit- 

 tle light through this chaos of particular or- 

 gans. In the preceding process of animal 

 Form, we specially characterized the Trunk 

 in its outer relations; but now we are to see 

 it as the chief seat of inner Assimilation, 

 vegetal in shape and function. It is the part 

 which ingests and digests and distributes the 

 material brought to it from the outside, work- 

 ing internally and immediately through inter- 

 nal organs. Such is the first stage of what we 

 here designate as the assimilative Process 

 of Animal-life, its most direct, immediate 

 phase, making the outer and different into the 

 inner and similar. But now comes the oppo- 

 site act of Assimilation; it produces also or- 

 gans directed outwardly, which have to meet 

 the hostile external world with both defense 

 and offense warding off its attacks as well 

 as seizing a portion of it for food. But this 

 is not all: the organism, to be directed out- 

 wardly for its own end, must be centralized 

 in an organ, the brain, which directs inward- 

 ly as well as outwardly, and which thus be- 

 comes the center of the Organism as self- 

 directed, which term expresses its supreme 

 attribute in the present field. 



We may in brief recapitulate the three 

 stages of the Process of Assimilation: the 

 Organism as inwardly directed (1) as out- 



