1 62 Studies in Animal Behavior 



primary purposive attributes of life (primare 

 Zweckmassigkeit) , and which must be presupposed 

 if an organism is to be an organism at all, we nat- 

 urally suppose that during the early periods of 

 evolution there has been a gradual substitution of 

 adaptive for non-adaptive modes of behavior. If 

 the new adaptations arise in and through experi- 

 ence they must be transmitted by inheritance if they 

 accumulate to the advantage of the race. But aside 

 from the difficulties which beset the theory that such 

 acquisitions are inherited, there is involved the fur- 

 ther difficulty of understanding how, in the begin- 

 ning, adaptations could have been acquired at all. 

 To this the Lamarckian might of course reply that 

 it is a fact that adaptations do arise through in- 

 dividual experience, however we may account for 

 them, and that it is not especially incumbent upon 

 him, qua Lamarckian, to explain their origin. There 

 is no gainsaying the pertinency of the Lamarckian's 

 answer as regards the origin of many purposive 

 forms of behavior. If, however, it can be shown 

 that the ability to acquire special adaptations rests 

 upon innate modes of reacting to stimuli, and that 

 in so far as acquired characters are adaptive, their 

 origin presupposes the existence of congenital adap- 

 tive reactions, the Lamarckian can no longer dodge 

 the responsibility of explaining how these congeni- 

 tal reactions came to be of service to the organism. 

 Unless the characters acquired by experience were 

 useful their accumulation through inheritance would 



