ABSTRACT
We have attempted to define the native basis of the mind. We have seen that it is a complex organization comprising a great number of functional units which mature spontaneously, just as muscles and glands and other tissues of the body mature. Maturation of any organ or tissue, if it is to proceed in normal fashion, requires the normal environment of other tissues, and also a normal environment of the whole organism: for the organism is a whole of which every part is subject in some degree to influence from every other part; and the processes of maturation are processes of active growth, with much give-and-take between the various parts and between the organism and its environment. But though the maturation-processes are in large measure dependent upon environmental conditions, those conditions may depart widely from the normal, and yet maturation may result in an organism which, in respect of all its organs and their relations to one another, conforms closely to a prescribed pattern, the pattern of the species.
