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Like many others, the authors of this book are not content with the idea that the human brain is in structure adequate to account for all of the so-called “mental phenomena,” and they have attempted to formulate a thesis based on some of McDougall's suggestions concerning an “immaterial psychic structure.” This “structure” they would call the “psychic organ,” and would ascribe to it (1) the function of receiving and retaining a record of past experience, (2) the ability to integrate sensorial stimuli into a unitary whole, and (3) the task of bringing this unitary whole into a focus with former experience.
In fact, “the object of this essay is tentatively to formulate the hypothesis that this ‘psychic structure’ is in the nature of a psychic organ inter-posed between the material brain and the mind.”
Instances of animal and insect behavior are cited to show that forms lower than man possess a psychic organ which discharges functions similar in kind to the human variety, but perhaps with differences in degree. As the basis of the immaterial substance they postulate a second order of