The Implications of Trial and Error 159 



responses, the outcome of inherited organization. 

 This conclusion applies to intelligent behavior 

 as well as to the more primitive forms of indirect 

 adjustment. That the burnt child dreads the fire 

 depends upon the fact that there is an innate re- 

 flex tendency to jerk back the hand when it comes 

 in contact with a hot object. We have therefore 

 a bit of primary adaptive responsiveness to start 

 with. Experience links up the sight of the object 

 with this primary reaction. Association -per se has 

 nothing teleological about it, but it is a means of 

 effecting further adjustments, or rather perhaps of 

 applying to new conditions the adaptive responses 

 already present. If an organism were constituted 

 so as to respond to all stimulations in a perfectly 

 hit or miss fashion, without any reference to its 

 own welfare, it is not likely, even if the creature 

 had the power of forming associations, that it would 

 be able to profit by experience. Suppose, for in- 

 stance, it should react to the sight of an object by 

 an act of seizure. Suppose that contact with the 

 object, which we will suppose in this case to be 

 food, should evoke an avoiding reaction instead 

 of the usual purposive movements. The sight of 

 the object becoming associated with the avoiding 

 reaction would cause an inhibition of the first re- 

 sponse by calling into play an antagonistic re- 

 action. If food were responded to by an avoiding 

 reaction, the associations acquired by experience, 

 while they might modify behavior, would not help 



