50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY 



region intuitively, its actions have a completeness that 

 an intelligent action does not exhibit until it has 

 become so habitual as to approach to automatic acting. 

 The relations between the organism and that part of 

 its world on which it acts, intuitively or instinctively, 

 is something like that between a key and the lock to 

 which it is fitted : it opens this lock, perhaps one or 

 two others which resemble it, but no more. Now 

 just because of this perfect, but restricted, adjust- 

 ment of the instinctive or automatically acting 

 organism to the objects on which it operates, know- 

 ledge of all else in the environment becomes of little 

 consequence. 



It is clear that intelligent acting involves delibe- 

 ration. The almost inevitable motor response to a 

 stimulus, which is characteristic of the reflex or in- 

 stinct, does not occur in the intelligent action : instead 

 of this we find that we choose between two or more 

 responses to the same stimulus. We reply to the latter 

 by doing this now, and that another time ; and we see 

 at once what results flow from acting differently upon 

 the same part of our environment, or acting in the same 

 way upon different parts. Perception, that is, know- 

 ledge of the world, arises from acting ; and as our 

 actions, when carried out intelligently, become almost 

 infinitely varied, the environment appears to us in 

 very many aspects. In every action we modify that 

 part of our surroundings on which we operate. We 

 can produce many modifications that are of no use to 

 us : these we do not attend to. We produce others 

 that are useful, and then we note the sequences of 

 events involved in our actions. Thus we discover or 

 invent natural law — an environment which is an orderly 

 one. We can calculate and predict what will happen : 

 we produce, for instance, a Nautical Almanac, at 



