, THE QUEST OF A CRITERION 61 



But if we look closely, we shall see that the explanation 

 is merely verbal, that we are again the dupes of words, 

 and that the trick of the solution consists in taking the 

 term &quot; adaptation &quot; in two entirely different senses at 

 the same time. 



If I pour into the same glass, by turns, water and 

 wine, the two liquids will take the same form, and the 

 sameness in form will be due to the sameness in 

 adaptation of content to container. Adaptation, here, 

 really means mechanical adjustment. The reason ie 

 that the form to which the matter has adapted itself 

 was there, ready-made, and has forced its own shape 

 on the matter. But, in the adaptation of an organism 

 to the circumstances it has to live in, where is the pre 

 existing form awaiting its matter ? The circumstances 

 are not a mould into which life is inserted and whose 

 form life adopts : this is indeed to be fooled by a 

 metaphor. There is no form yet, and life must create 

 a form for itself, suited to the circumstances which are 

 made for it. It will have to make the best of these 

 circumstances, neutralize their inconveniences and 

 utilize their advantages in short, respond to outer 

 actions by building up a machine which has no re 

 semblance to them. Such adapting is not repeating, but 

 replying, an entirely different thing. If there is still 

 adaptation, it will be in the sense in which one may say 

 of the solution of a problem of geometry, for example, 

 that it is adapted to the conditions. I grant indeed 

 that adaptation so understood explains why different 

 evolutionary processes result in similar forms : the same 

 problem, of course, calls for the same solution. But 

 it is necessary then to introduce, as for the solution of a 

 problem of geometry, an intelligent activity, or at least 

 a cause which behaves in the same way. This is to bring 



