Ontogenic Agencies 91 



§ I. Ontogenic Agencies 



Ontogeny.— The series of facts which investigation in 

 this field has to deal with are those of the individual 

 creature's development, and two sorts of facts may be 

 distinguished from the point of view of t\^Q functions which 

 an organism performs in the course of its life history. 

 There is, in the first place, the development of his 

 hereditary impulse, the unfolding of its heredity in the 

 forms and functions which characterize its kind, together 

 with the congenital variations which characterize the par- 

 ticular individual — the variations peculiar and constitu- 

 tional to him— and there is, in the second place, the series 

 of functions, acts, etc., which he learns for himself in the 

 course of his life. All of these latter, the special modifica- 

 tions which an organism tmdergoes during its ontogeny, 

 thrown together, have been called 'acquired characters,' 

 and we may use that expression or adopt one recently 

 suggested by Osborn,i < ontogenic variations' (except that 

 I should prefer the form 'ontogenetic variations') if the 

 word 'variations' seems appropriate at all.^ 



Assuming that there are such new or modified functions, 

 in the first instance, and such 'acquired characters' aris- 



. Reported in Science, April 3 ; also used by hirn before the New York 

 Academy of Science, April .3. There is some eonfus.or. between the two 

 terminations, ' genie ■ and 'genetic.' I think the proper d-'-'-" ^ J^;] 

 which reserves the former, 'genie,' for application m cases m which the word 

 ; which it is affixed qualifies a term used actively, while the other, 'genct.c 

 conveys similarly a passive signification; thus agenc.es, causes, mfiuences 

 etc, are 'ontogenic, phylogenic, etc.,' while effects, consequences, etc., ar 

 'ontogenetic, phylogenetic, etc.' On terminology, see, however, the short 

 naner recrinted below as Chap. XI. § i. 



' 'Ti'does not. The term modification, used above, is also given th.s mean- 

 ing by Lloyd Morgan (,Habit and Instinct, 1S97) and is now w.aely adopted. 



