Method of Regulation in Behavior and in Other Fields. 487 



opinion at present seems to be generally against it. Yet Semon 

 ('04) in his recent valuable monograph on the phenomena allied 

 to memory and habit, maintains the affirmative view, and pre- 

 sents evidence in favor of it. We are in the beginning of the study 

 of such problems, and it can hardly be said that experiments of 

 sufficient duration and precision have yet been tried to really 

 test the matter. If the inheritance of regulatory reactions 

 acquired after trial should be demonstrated, the process sketched 

 above would give us a satisfactory general method for the develop- 

 ment of regulatory behavior, in the race as well as in the individual. 

 In the protozoa this difficulty of course does not exist; the acquire- 

 ments of individuals may remain as acquirements of the race. 



If such inheritance does not occur, then the existence of con- 

 genital definite regulatory reactions would seem to be explicable 

 only on the basis of the selection of individuals having varying 

 methods of reaction, unless we are to adopt the theories of vitalism. 

 In the method we have sketched above, a certain reaction that is 

 regulatory is selected, through the operation of physiological laws, 

 from among many performed by the same individual. In what is 

 called natural selection, the same reaction is selected from among 

 many performed by different individuals — in both cases because 

 it is regulatory — because it assists the physiological processes of 

 the organism. The two factors must work in the same direction. 

 "Intelligence" and natural selection are two analogous methods 

 of selecting the adaptive reactions from among the possible ones; 

 they must then work together, as Baldwin ('02) has so well 

 pointed out. Which of the two factors is the essential one in 

 producing congenital adaptive reactions we shall of course not 

 attempt to decide, since no one knows. 



We often find in organisms behavior that is not regulatory, or 

 that is regulatory only in a very imperfect way. How are we to 

 account for this.f* Without going into details, it is evident that 

 there exist at least three general conditions that may result in 

 non-regulatory behavior. First, the organism is formed of sub- 

 stance that is subject to the ordinary laws of physics and chem- 

 istry. Various physical and chemical- agents may act directly 

 upon this substance, producing results that are not regulatory. 

 The fact that the relation of external processes to internal ones is 

 one of the chief determining factors in producing reactions, of 



