Laws and Hypotheses for Behavior 243 



If the movements are really the result of the action of the en- 

 vironment on the animal's nature, they are never random. 

 A baby twiddles his thumbs or waves his legs for exactly the 

 same sort of reason that a chick pecks at a worm or preens 

 its wing. 



The other doctrine which witnesses to neglect of the 

 axiom that behavior is the creation of the environment, act- 

 ing on the animal's nature, is the doctrine that the need 

 for a certain behavior helps to create it, that being in a 

 difficulty tends in and of itself to make an animal respond so 

 as to end the difficulty. 



The truth is that to a difficulty the animal responds by 

 whatever its inherited and acquired nature has connected 

 with the special form of difficulty and that in many animals 

 the one response of those thus provided which relieves the 

 difficulty is selected and connected more firmly with that 

 difficulty's next appearance. The difficulty acts only as a 

 stimulus to the animal's nature and its relief acts only as a 

 premium to the connection whereby it was relieved. The 

 law of original behavior, or the law of instinct, is then that 

 to any situation an animal will, apart from learning, respond 

 by virtue of the inherited nature of its reception-, connection- 

 and action- systems. 



The inquiry into the laws of learning to be made in this 

 essay is limited to those aspects of behavior which the term 

 has come historically to signify, that is, to intellect, skill, 

 morals and the like. 



For the purposes of this essay it is not necessary to decide 

 just what features of an animal's behavior to include under 

 intellect, skill, morals and the like. The statements to be 

 made will fit any reasonable dividing line between behavior 

 on the one side and mere circulation, digestion, excretion 

 and the like on the other. There should in fact be no clear 



