ANIMAL BEHAVIOR. 299 



But we see the performance executed by the young, which have 

 never had any experience of that kind, nor any opportunity to 

 copy from others. We cannot therefore suppose that they 

 perform these acts understandingly. The young Necttirus, 

 hatched in a dish where it has never met any living thing 

 except its companions, has nothing to guide its first effort 

 to capture food except its organization and its simple expe- 

 rience in walking and swimming, which acts are again like 

 those of the adult, not because directed by intelligence or 

 example, but because they are performed with the same organs 

 under similar conditions. The young has the same sensory 

 and motor apparatus as the adult, but it has never before 

 known the feeling of hunger, it has never experienced pain 

 from contact with an enemy, it has never learned that a prey 

 may escape if not approached slyly. Its movements in ap- 

 proaching and snatching a piece of meat, as if it were a 

 living object, are, then, those characteristic of the species, 

 not because they are measured and adapted to a definite end 

 by intelligent experience, but because they are organically 

 determined ; in other words, depend essentially upon a specific 

 organization. 



The timidity of young hatched in a dish is the same as that 

 of specimens hatched in the lake, and therefore it cannot be 

 charged to individual experience or to parental influence. It, 

 too, inheres in the special brand of organization, and has noth- 

 ing to do with memory of pain sensations. 



e. Origin and Meaning of Behavior. 



We have taken a very important step in our study when we 

 have ascertained that behavior, which at first sight appeared 

 to owe its purposive character to intelligence, cannot possibly 

 be so explained, but must depend largely, at least, upon the 

 mechanism of organization. The origin and meaning of the 

 behavior antedate all individual acquisitions and form part of 

 the problem of the origin and history of the organization itself. 

 It is the first and indispensable step, without which it would be 

 impossible to reach sound views, either as regards the particular 



