244 The Unity of the Organism 



The Conditions of Mental Initiative^ and in order that the 

 reader may get the full force of what Rojce is talking 

 about, he is earnestly recommended to read the entire chap- 

 ter. Only thus can the "foregoing paragraphs" mentioned 

 be adequately appraised. But we must try, in our own 

 way, to get the essence of the matter. Royce's presenta- 

 tion is his way of insisting upon the facts of psychical life 

 and activity, high and low, which have given rise to the 

 Wundtian conception of apperception, these facts being 

 the indubitably initiatory, directive and selective qualities 

 of mind in all its grades. Furthermore, Royce dwells on 

 the homogeneity, as one may express it, of this intrinsicality 

 of mental life — its initiative, its persistence, and its selectiv- 

 ity — with the individual or fluctuating variations which 

 have played so large a part in theorizing about organic 

 evolution and heredity during the Darwinian era of biology. 

 And he goes back still further in good modern biological 

 fashion, and connects these variations with organic growth 

 itself, thus calling attention to the fact that variations of 

 this particular sort can not be referred to environmental 

 influence. 



At this point we may stop, as biologists, to supplement 

 Royce's argument by pointing out that variations of the 

 sort indicated, are referable to environmental influence only 

 in the sense that growth is so referable. An organism's 

 securing and taking in of its nutritive substances are un- 

 doubtedly a kind of response to contact with its environ- 

 ment, and in that broad sense growth may be said to be 

 due to environmental influence. If the organism had no 

 nourishment, if it received no environmental influence of this 

 kind, it certainly would not grow. At the same time, since 

 the organism manages somehow to build a great variety of 

 tissues and organs out of one and the same supply of nour- 

 ishment; that is in response to one and the same "environ- 

 mental influence" (as we are agreeing to use the phrase 



