Instinct and Lamarckism : Co-adaptation 63 



bination of movements, if the apparatus had not been 

 made ah'eady trained by actual use for the combination 

 which is effected.! So far as there are modifications in 

 the grouping, even these are very slight functional varia- 

 tions from the uses already made of the muscles involved. 

 This point is no longer subject to dispute ; for pathological 

 cases show that unless some adequate idea of a former 

 movement made by the same muscles, or some other idea 

 which stands for it by association, can be brought up in 

 mind, the intelligence is helpless. Otherwise it cannot 

 only not make new movements ; it cannot even repeat 

 old habitual movements. So we may say that intelligent 

 adaptation does not create coordinations; it only makes 

 functional use of coordinations which were alternatively 

 present already in the creature's equipment.^ 



Interpreting this in terms of congenital variations, we 

 may say that the variations which the intelligence uses are 

 alternative possibilities of muscular movement. But these 

 are exactly the variations which instinct uses, except that 

 in instinct they are not alternative. That this is so, 

 indeed, lies at the basis of the claim that instinct is inher- 

 ited habit. The real difference in the variation involved in 

 the two cases is in the connections in the brain whereby in 



1 Professor Cope has understood this to mean that consciousness can 

 select out or direct the combination. This is accomplished, in my opinion, by 

 a process analogous to natural selection, i.e., the survival of useful movements 

 from overproduced movements, a process called 'functional selection' in 

 Mental Development, formulated in an earlier paper, * The Origin of Volition,' 

 reprinted in Fragments in Philosophy and Science (1902); see also the 

 references given, p. 56, note i, above. 



2 When we strain our muscles to accomplish a new act of skill, we are 

 aiming to use the apparatus in new ways by a selection from possible combi- 

 nations; and even when we learn to use disused muscles, as those of the ear, 

 we are only aiming to stir up possible connections not before actively used. 



