366 Problems of Organic Adaptation 



their causes are mechanistic; the contrary view is due to a 

 false conception of purpose or of mechanism. There are 

 good reasons for believing that purpose and will in ourselves 

 are not uncaused but rather that they are results of ante- 

 cedent causes ; that they also are links in the chain of cause 

 and effect, and hence are mechanistic in origin. 



We have already found that many of the beneficial re- 

 sponses of protozoa and germ-cells are the residuum left 

 after the elimination of non-beneficial responses; in these 

 cells, however, there is little if any capacity to profit by 

 experience. On the other hand, a cat that by random move- 

 ments accidentally unlatches a door and lets itself out, as 

 in Thorndike's experiment, gradually omits useless move- 

 ments, remembers past successes, and finally learns to un- 

 latch the door at once, thus showing intelligent purpose, 

 developed through the mechanistic process of the elimina- 

 tion of useless responses. Are intelligence and purpose in 

 man fundamentally different from this? There is every 

 reason to believe that human beings arrive at intelligence 

 and reason by the same process a process of many trials 

 and errors, a few trials and successes, a remembering of 

 these past experiences, and an application of them to new 

 conditions. All solving of problems, directed thinking and 

 consecutive reasoning are accompanied by, if they do not 

 consist in, rapid elimination of unfit ideas and mental activi- 

 ties. Thus intelligence and purpose in man, no less than fit- 

 ness in all organisms, may be explained as results of the 

 elimination of the unfit; they also are adaptations; and for 

 this reason, if for no other, adaptations appear to be intel- 

 ligent and purposive. 



4. Teleology 



Nevertheless, this mechanistic explanation of fitness and 

 purpose is not complete and many things are left unex- 



