ADAPTATIONS 89 



been made for that purpose and no other. The 

 term adaptation is only utilisable in connection 

 with a telic explanation of living things, and it is 

 just that telic explanation which is so unpalatable 

 to the mechanist school. Yet it is difficult to see 

 how such an explanation can be avoided by any 

 one who really studies the behaviour of living 

 things. 



Our own behaviour and the behaviour of the 

 animals and birds around us would seem to point 

 clearly enough to purposive actions, and this is a 

 fact which is tacitly at least admitted even by those 

 who believe most strongly in mechanist views. 



If any machine habitually repeats the same 

 action and repeats that action in a precisely similar 

 manner on every occasion, no one could have much 

 difficulty in coming to the conclusion that it was 

 for the purpose of performing that action that it 

 was constructed. Moreover, if it performs no 

 action but the one, it may reasonably be assumed 

 that that action is automatically performed and 

 no question as to the sentient nature of the machine 

 will arise. On the other hand, whilst we can con- 

 ceive though with some difficulty the idea of 

 a machine which was capable of executing a wide 

 and various range of movements, it is hard to think 

 of a machine which could execute a wide range of 

 movements and always and on every occasion in a 



