ADAPTATION 181 



philosophical analysis, we have reluctantly to confess that, 

 at present at least, it does not seem possible to gather any 

 new real proof of life-autonomy, of "vitalism," from these 

 facts, though of course also no proof against it. 



We have stated that there is in every case of both our 

 types of adaptive events a correspondence between the 

 degree of the factor to which adaptation occurs, and the 

 degree of the adaptive effect. We here may speak of an 

 answering between cause and effect with regard to adapta- 

 tion, and so perhaps it may seem as if the concept of an 

 " answering reaction ' : (" Aiitwortsreaktion "), which was 

 introduced into science by Goltz l and which is to play 

 a great part in our discussions of next summer, may come 

 into account : but in our present cases " answering " only 

 exists between a simple cause and a simple effect and relates 

 almost only to quantity and locality. There is therefore 

 lacking the most important feature, which, as will be seen, 

 would have made the new concept of value. 



We only, I believe, can state the fact that there are 

 relations between morphogenetic causes and effects which 

 are adaptations, that functional disturbances or changes are 

 followed by single histogenetic reactions from the organism, 

 which are compensations of its disturbed or changed 

 functional state. We are speaking of facts here, of very 

 strange ones indeed. But I feel unable to formulate a real 

 proof against all sorts of mechanism out of these facts : 

 there might be a machine, to which all is due in a pre- 

 established way. Of course we should hardly regard such 

 a machine as very probable, after we have seen that it 



1 Beitrage zw Lehre von den Functional der Nervencentren des Frosches, 

 Berlin, 1869. 



