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 
