24 ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONS 



once confronts us. The selection of the basis for organization is the most 

 important step before us, because if we may judge from the history of 

 previous attempts, success or failure depends upon this selection. It 

 appears from the preceding pages that we must choose between emphasiz- 

 ing structure and form on the one hand, and function and activity on 

 the other. 



I. FORM AND STRUCTURE IN RELATION TO ENVIRONMENT 



Each article of furniture in the room where I am sitting, each gar- 

 ment which I am wearing, and the watch in my pocket were made for 

 a purpose, and are adapted to the purpose for which they were made. 

 This is so generally true of everything with which we have to do in our 

 daily lives that we come to think of the phenomena of nature in the same 

 terms, often without stopping to consider whether or not it can be true 

 of nature. 



The reading into nature of the idea of purpose and of adaptation has 

 been a common thing since the earliest records of science (38, pp. 52-56). 

 Two centuries ago the idea that animals were created to fit their 

 particular place in nature, just as a watch is made for a purpose, was the 

 idea held by scientists; indeed, such is often the idea of non-scientific 

 people today. Later, Lamarck conceived the idea that the animal was 

 not necessarily adapted to a given place, but became adapted to such a 

 place by trying to live in that place, or, while not able to do a certain 

 thing, became structurally able to do that thing by trying to do it, just 

 as the flatworm's tail becomes pointed, and the blacksmith's arm becomes 

 strong through use. Lamarck (38, p. 169; 39, chap, vi) believed that 

 the changes brought about by the uses which the organism made of its 

 parts were inherited, but science has found chiefly evidence that such 

 changes in structure are not inherited, and this idea of the origin of 

 adaptation has been quite generally rejected. 



Following Lamarck came Darwin, who conceived the idea that all 

 the individuals of a species which came into existence were not equally 

 adapted to the mode of life that was necessary for them and those best 

 adapted survived. Their characters, being born with the individual, 

 were inheritable and the adaptation of species to which the individuals 

 belong became perfected through the destruction of the unadapted. 

 The destruction of the poorly adapted and the survival of the best 

 adapted is called " natural selection" or the "survival of the fittest." 



Following Darwin, a large number of investigators set to work to 

 apply his theory to the phenomena of nature in detail. The ideas of 



