Functional Selection 1 1 3 



the ontogeny of mind,^ just as on the organic side the phy- 

 logeny of the organism gets its determinate direction from 

 the organism's ontogenetic accommodations. And since 

 it is the one principle of organic selection working by the 

 same ftmctioiis to set the direction of both phylogenies, 

 the physical and the mental, the two developments are 

 not two, but one. Evolution is, therefore, not more 

 biological than psychological (cf. Mejital Development^ 

 esp. pp. 383-388, and see the detailed statement of this 

 requirement, on any theory of evolution, above. Part I.). 



3. It makes use of the relation of structure to function 

 required by the principle of ' use and disuse.' 



4. The only alternative theories of the accommodations 

 of the individual are those of 'pure chance,' on the one 

 hand, and a ' creative act ' of consciousness, on the other 

 hand. Pure chance is refuted by all the facts which show 

 that the organism does not wait for chance, but goes 

 out in movement and effects new adjustments to its 

 environment. Furthermore, individual accommodations 

 are determinate ; they proceed in definite, progressive 

 lines. A short study of the child will disabuse any man, I 

 think, of the 'pure chance' theory. But the other theory, 

 which holds that consciousness makes adjustments and 

 modifies structures directly by its fiat, is contradicted by 

 the psychology of voluntary movement. Consciousness 

 can bring about no movement without having first an 

 adequate experience of that movement to serve on occasion 

 as a stimulus to the innervation of the appropriate motor 

 centres. 'This point is no longer subject to dispute; 



1 Professor C. S. Minot suggests that the terms * onto-psychic ' and 

 * phylo-psychic ' would be convenient adjectives wherewith to mark this 

 distinction. 

 I 



