272 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 

 ADAPTATION AS THE STARTING-POINT 



All facts of morphological adaptations facts which we 

 have analysed already from a different point of view, as being 

 among the most typical phenomena of organic regulation 

 form the starting-point of this theory, and it must be 

 granted that they form a very solid foundation, for they 

 are facts. The theory only has to enlarge hypothetically 

 the realm of these facts, or rather the realm of the law 

 that governs them. Indeed, it is assumed by Lamarckism 

 that the organism is endowed with the faculty of responding 

 to any change of the environment which may change its 

 function by a morphologically expressed alteration of its 

 functional state and form, which is adapted to the state of 

 conditions imposed from without. Of course, as stated in 

 this most general form, the assumption is not true, but it is 

 true within certain limits, as we know ; and there seems to 

 be no reason why we should not believe that there are many 

 more cases of adaptation than we actually know at present, 

 or that, in former phylogenetic times, the organisms were 

 more capable of active adaptation than they are now. So 

 to a certain extent, at least, Lamarckism can be said to 

 rest upon a causa vera. 



It is important to notice that this causa vera would 

 imply vitalistic causality when taken in the wide meaning 

 which Lamarckism allows to it : indeed, the power of active 

 adaptation to indefinite changes would imply a sort of 

 causal connection that is nowhere known except in the 

 organism. Lamarck himself is not very clear about this 

 point, he seems to be afraid of certain types of uncritical 

 vitalism in vogue in his days ; but modern writers have 



