MIND IN EVOLUTION 527 



mutations, as a bird is an agent in building a nest or a 

 spider in weaving a web, we might say that they were artists 

 of their own fortunes. But the variations and mutations are 

 due to the organism in the germ-cell phase of its being, and, 

 whatever be our surmise, we have no data for speaking of 

 the mentality involved. What we do know, however, is that 

 the full-grown organism sometimes plays these novelties as 

 cards in its game; it puts them to the test of use; it experi- 

 ments with them; it tries what locks these new keys will 

 fit. It seems to the open-air naturalist indisputable that the 

 organism is an experimental agent. 



Prof. James Ward laid emphasis many years ago on what 

 he called subjective or hedonic selection on the part of an- 

 imals. Without denying the importance of natural selection, 

 he directed attention to organismal selection. Environment 

 selects organisms, in a metaphorical sense; organisms select 

 environments, in a less metaphorical sense. Creatures seek 

 out corners that please them most, that suit them best; and 

 this selective agency on the creature's part has been one of 

 the conditions of that advance from lower to higher forms 

 which has puzzled so many. 



u Thus even if there were no natural selection of vari- 

 ations fortuitously occurring, and even if there were no 

 struggle for subsistence, still the will to live, the sponta- 

 neous restriction of each individual to so much of the common 

 environment as evokes reaction by its hedonic effects (with the 

 increasing adaptation and adjustment that will thus ensue), 

 and, finally, the pursuit of betterment to which satiety urges 

 and novelty prompts, these conditions, really implying no 

 more than the most rudimentary facts of mind, will account 

 for definite variations to an apparently unlimited extent " 

 (Naturalism and Agnosticism, I, 1899, p. 229). 



