60 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



of every one of its actions depends on the specificity of all 

 stimuli relating to sensation and movement which have 

 encountered it in the past, and on all the specific effects 

 of those stimuli. This character we have already tried 

 to describe briefly by saying that acting depends on the 

 " individual history ' of the organism, and we shall now 

 describe it technically by saying that an " historical basis of 

 reacting " (" historische Eeaktionsbasis ") is one of the chief 

 components of which the specificity of every action is a 

 function. 



Without any difficulty you will become convinced, I 

 suppose, that this " historical basis of reacting," being one of 

 the foundations of action, is something different from the 

 " history ' of a phonograph. Therefore the technical term 

 " historical basis of reacting " requires a precise technical 

 definition : it is to mean more than the mere verbal 

 expression states. The phonograph, though determined 

 in the specificity of its reactions by the specificity of its 

 history, is not able to change the specificity of what it has 

 received in any way ; the organism has the faculty of 

 profiting from the specific combinations received in order 

 to form other combined specificities. It changes, so we may 

 say, the specificities it has encountered into other specificities, 

 which it forms on the foundation of their elements. Here 

 we find what we are in search of : the historical basis of 

 acting is " historical " only in a most general, not in a 

 specific meaning ; specificities, it is true, have made up the 

 " history ' that is commonly called " experience," but the 

 basis of reacting, as a basis of action created historically, 

 is not in any way specified in detail, but consists of the 

 elements of the experienced specificities. The second half 



