THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR 151 



II 



These strange anachronisms are in striking contrast with cur- 

 rent biological theory. Darwin's masterly argument for natural 

 selection as a mechanical theory of adaptation banished forever 

 from scientific speculation the doctrine of special creation accord- 

 ing to Design, and established in its place an interest in the 

 genesis of organic forms and functions according to natural law 

 that has been of inestimable value in the interpretation of the world 

 as we find it. With the publication of the "Origin of Species" 

 appeared new aspects of fitness, new conceptions of conduct, 

 a new and more practical ethic. The problems of behavior 

 gradually assumed new forms under the influence of the com- 

 parative method. New light was thrown on questions of human 

 right and wrong by investigations of the behavior of the lower 

 organisms. Objective studies made head against pre-Darwinian 

 types of speculation and the doctrine of natural selection was 

 applied with increasing freedom to the elucidation of all sorts 

 of organic response. 



The adoption of a mechanical substitute for the crude teleo- 

 logy which natural selection displaced, marked an enormous 

 advance in methods of investigation at the same time that it 

 gave new meaning to problems of behavior. No mechanical 

 theory of selection, however, is competent to explain the origin 

 of the differences between organisms, their parts, or their ac- 

 tions, on which selection must be based. Such a mechanism 

 of survival is insufficient because it represents results rather 

 than processes. Even in the extreme form in which it appears 

 in the theory of germinal selection, it remains external to the 

 units selected. It is a logical, not a physiological mechanism. 



Ill 



It is to the analysis of physiological mechanisms that we 

 turn, then, for further light upon the problems of behavior. 

 At once questions of meaning take a new form. The signifi- 

 cance of behavior, and its development, cease to be of imme- 

 diate concern. For the objective of the physiologist is control 

 of physiological processes, which is at once the pragmatic test 

 of understanding and a practical necessity for the righteous life. 



It is as a physiologist, then, that I invite your further atten- 



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