160 Studies in Animal Behavior 



the animal out of its unfortunate situation. Merely 

 associating experiences is of no particular value. 

 There must be some principle of selective associa- 

 tion if experience is to be turned to any account, 

 and this principle is supplied by the animal's stock 

 of congenitally adaptive reactions. What makes in- 

 telligence of any value to its possessor is its ingre- 

 dient of primary purposive responsiveness. With- 

 out this ingredient, which is the real controlling 

 hand in an animal's life, behavior would be a mere 

 chaos of misdirected activity. It is really instinct 

 that makes intelligence useful. 



If the adaptiveness of intelligence rests upon the 

 adaptiveness of instincts and reflexes, and if the 

 latter is determined by inherited organization, we 

 must look to the forces that have moulded organi- 

 zation, i. e., the factors of evolution, for the pri- 

 mary source of adaptiveness in behavior. Aside 

 from the very doubtful role of the Lamarckian fac- 

 tor, we have at present no way of explaining how 

 purposive organization can evolve, except through 

 the operation of natural selection. Given varia- 

 tion (which may be quite fortuitous), struggle for 

 existence, and the survival of the best endowed, 

 adaptive organization will be the outcome. Natu- 

 ral selection is itself a sort of trial and error process, 

 a method of getting a successful product out of vari- 

 ability which, so far as adaptation is concerned, 

 there is no reason to believe is other than of a ran- 

 dom, hit or miss character. Whether the princi- 



