vin PRACTICAL JUDGMENT 161 



inherited structure, awakened as it is to activity by the 

 presence of the prey. This structure however has grown 

 up in the main because it did answer the requirements of 

 the animal's ancestors. Structures which answered those 

 needs less adequately have been eliminated, and through 

 the laws of inheritance the surviving structure has been 

 perfected. Thus, in an indirect and circuitous fashion, 

 the results of an action do go to determine what the action 

 shall be before the level of intelligent purpose is reached. 

 But this is true only in the sense that the generic results 

 of that sort of action have operated on the individual to 

 make him what he is. The particular results of this 

 particular action are not operative. The act is really the 

 result of a permanent structure acted upon by a stimulus. 

 It is adaptive, not purposive, its consequence in the 

 particular case is a result, not an end, and it should be 

 described as serving not a purpose but a function. 



Since intelligence is above all things purposive in 

 character, the appearance of actions definitely directed to 

 and determined by the ends which they serve is perhaps 

 the most critical moment in the evolution of Mind. How 

 are we to understand this determination ? Let us first be 

 clear that where there is purpose there we can say that 

 this particular action is determined by this particular end. 

 Where there is adaptation without purpose, any given 

 action is not determined by its own end, but by a structure 

 which has grown up by subserving results which were 

 " ends " only to the onlooker. The " mechanical " reflex 

 is a fixed type of reaction to a stimulus of a certain kind. 

 Given stimulus and organism, the reaction is always the 

 same. We move, so to say, in a region of universals, and 

 action apparently purposive is in reality blind. A fish will 

 dart at a wriggling worm. This satisfies a need. Is it done 

 in order to satisfy the need ? It seems rather that the sight 

 of the wriggling object causes the dart, since wriggling things 

 that are not edible a thread to which a button is hang- 

 ing, or a curl of cigarette smoke, 1 will have the same effect. 

 A male frog at mating time is provided with a machinery 

 for grasping the female, but he will as readily grasp other 

 1 Bateson, loc. cit> 



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