THE HUMAN MACHINE 
A Mechanistic View of Life Which Conceives Man as Being Merely a Venus’ 
Fly-Trap Many Times Multiplied—The Kinetic System for the 
Transformation of Energy—Origin and Function of the Emotions 
A REVIEW 
NE school of biologists has long 
() looked upon all life from a 
“mechanistic” point of view, 
holding that there is nothing 
mystical about a living being, but that 
if our knowledge were sufficient we 
could resolve its whole life into reac- 
tions; we could interpret everything in 
terms of physics and chemistry, with 
no unexplainable residue, no “‘soul’’ or 
“vital principle’’ left over. 
Dr. George W. Crile, Professor of 
Surgery in Western Reserve University 
(Cleveland, Ohio) has applied this 
hypothesis to his study of man and has 
brought the researches of many years 
together in a substantial volume! under 
the title of ““‘Man—An Adaptive Mech- 
anism.”’ Taking his stand with ortho- 
dox Darwinians—one might even say, 
with primitive Darwinians—Dr. Crile 
believes that everything in the human 
body can be interpreted as an adapta- 
tion, the result of the long process of 
evolution and the constant struggle for 
survival. 
“The fact is,” he informs us, “that 
the present form of man is the result of 
an inconceivably long and _ tedious 
process of addition and subtraction, of 
grafting character upon character in 
somewhat the same haphazard fashion 
as in certain mountains in South 
America stones are thrown by the 
wayfarer upon a lone Indian grave. 
Some land securely and augment the 
mound, while others fall at random and 
roll away, the desired result being 
achieved, however, a memorial to the 
one who lies beneath the pile. If the 
result of man’s haphazard assemblage of 
organs is to some extent adequate to 
the needs of his present environment, it 
is because during the age-long processes 
of evolution all the fatally awkward com- 
binations have been eliminated by a 
struggle so keen that the slightest varia- 
tion in the length of a leaf, the strength 
of a limb or the color of an egg, has 
given the victory to a rival species.” 
A good many geneticists would ques- 
tion the truth of this statement; but 
the value of Dr. Crile’s book does not 
lie in his contributions to genetics. He 
does not attempt to show in any instance 
how a certain adaptation has arisen— 
indeed he seems not to realize that there 
is any difficulty about this; but in ex- 
plaining the usefulness of some struc- 
ture, once it has arisen, he makes out a 
very plausible case. 
“The test of utility,’ he tells us, 
“may be applied to internal processes 
as well as to external manifestations 
in custom and social forms of man’s 
peculiar mode of adaptation by nervous 
reactions. On this basis man’s claim 
to a superior place among animals 
depends less upon different reactions 
than upon a greater number of reactions 
as compared with the reactions of 
‘lower animals.’ Ability to respond 
adaptively to more elements in the 
environment gives a larger dominion, 
that is all.” 
THE NATURE OF ‘‘MIND”’ 
“Mind,” the word we use to express 
the reactions of man’s nervous mechan- 
ism, “‘is no phenomenon apart and dis- 
tinct from other functions of the 
nervous system. Indeed, mind, as we 
i 
1Man—An Adaptive Mechanism. By George W. Crile, F.A.C.S. Edited by Annette 
Austin, A.B. Pp. 387, price $2.50. New York, The Macmillan Co., 66 Fifth Avenue, 1916. 
The photographs of Venus’ Fly-Trap, illustrating this review, were-made for the JOURNAL OF 
HEREDITY by John Howard Payne from a specimen furnished by Frederick V. Coville of the 
Bureau of Plant Industry. 
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