220 ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 



ality, and therefore no behaviour. It is an interesting point 

 that the rare occasions on which one applies the term be- 

 haviour to a not-living thing are when one is dealing with 

 something like a ship to which man has given a quasi-indi- 

 viduality. 



(4) Perhaps the most important question before us is 

 whether the behaviour of organisms has any real spontaneity, 

 precluding or limiting the possibility of prediction, or 

 whether the suggestion of spontaneity is fictitious and due 

 to the complexity of the conditions. It was once true to 

 say that the wind bloweth where it listeth, but now the 

 meteorologist tells us whence it comes and whither it goes. 

 Are we, in our ignorance or obscurantism, postulating for 

 the living creature a spontaneity and unpredictability such 

 as our forefathers believed to be exhibited by the wind ? This 

 is the problem of biological determinism, analogous to the 

 problem of psychological determinism and free will. We 

 venture to say just a little on this difficult problem. 



As we ascend the scale of being there is a growing amount 

 of experimental indeterminism. An organism is free as com- 

 pared with a not-living system. When we begin experiment- 

 ing with a starfish, we cannot tell what it will do in the 

 various situations in which we place it, but after we have 

 experimented for a long time we can tell what the starfish 

 we have worked with will do under certain circumstances, 

 provided always that we know its ' physiological condition '. 

 For a hungry animal does not behave as a full-fed one does. 

 But when we are rash enough to make a prediction in regard 

 to the behaviour of a fresh starfish, of the same kind and 

 weight and size, we are very likely to be very far wrong. 

 Why is this? It is otherwise in the inorganic world, where 

 we can safely argue from one thing to another thing of the 



