THE ORGANISM AS ACTIVE 307 



admit the creative power of life? Dohrn, for instance, was 

 fully aware of the great transforming influence exerted by 

 function upon form his theory of Functionswechsel regards 

 as the most powerful agent of change the activity of the 

 animal, its effort to make the best use of its organs, to apply 

 them at need in new ways to meet new demands. Why 

 then did he not go a step further and admit that the animal 

 could by its own subconscious efforts form entirely new 

 organs? Why did most morphologists join with him in 

 belittling the organism's power of self-transformation ? 



The reasons seem to have been several. There is first 

 the fundamental reason, that the idea of an active creative 

 organism is repugnant to the intelligence, and that we try 

 by all means in our power to substitute for this some other 

 conception. In so doing we instinctively fasten upon the 

 relatively less living side of organisms their routine habits 

 and reflexes, their routine structure and ignore the essential 

 activity which they manifest both in behaviour and in form- 

 change. 



We tend also to lay the causes of form-change, of 

 evolution, as far as possible outside the living organism. 

 With Darwin we seek the transforming factors in the 

 environment rather than within the organism itself. We 

 fight shy of the Lamarckian conception that the living thing 

 obscurely works out its own salvation by blind and instinctive 

 effort. We like to think of organisms as machines, as 

 passive inventions 1 gradually perfected from generation to 

 generation by some external agency, by environment or by 

 natural selection, or what you will. All this makes us chary 

 of believing that Nature is prodigal of new organs. 



Other causes of the unwillingness of morphologists to 

 admit the new formation of organs are to be sought in the 



o . o 



main principle of pure morphology itself, that the unity of 

 plan imposes an iron limit upon adaptation, and in the 



1 From this point of view there is a very profound analogy between 

 artificial and natural selection. Upon the theory of natural selection 

 organisms are lifeless constructs which are mechanically perfected by 

 external agency, just as machines are improved by a process of conscious 

 selection of the most successful among a number of competing models. 

 (Cf. passage quoted below, on p. 308.) 



