1921] Wheeler: Some Social Beetles 117 



turn is only the direct result of the mnemic faculty characteristic 

 of all living matter. This single physiological tendency of a 

 general kind, accordingly, is suificient to give rise to a large num- 

 ber of the most diversified particular affective tendencies. Thus 

 every cause of disturbance will produce a corresponding ten- 

 dency to repulsion with special characteristics determined by 

 the kind of disturbance, by its strength, and by the measures 

 capable of avoiding the disturbing elements; and for every 

 incidental means of preserving or restoring the normal physio- 

 logical condition, there will be a quite definite corresponding 

 tendency such as "longing," "desire," "attraction" and so forth. 

 Even the instinct of self-preservation — when understood in the 

 usual narrow sense of "preservation of one's own life" — is only 

 a particular derivative and direct consequence of this very gen- 

 eral tendencj?^ to preserve physiological invariability." This ten- 

 dency, however, as Rignano remarks, is supplemented by another, 

 "for as soon as the previous stationary condition cannot be 

 restored by any means, that is by any movements or change oi 

 location, the organism disposes itself in a new stationary con- 

 dition consistent with its new external and internal environment. 

 In this way there originate a large number of new phenomena 

 called 'adaptations'." 



Of course, the contention that the appetites are fundamen- 

 tally important in animal behavior is not new. It is merely 

 astonishing that they have been so consistently ignored by many 

 modern observers. The role of appetency, or appetite, was set 

 forth with great acumen by the philosopher Fouillee, especially 

 in the third book of his "Evolutionnisme des Idees Forces" 

 (1920, first edition 1890) . The germ of the conception, however, 

 can be traced back to Reimarus (1798) and Leibnitz (Dwelshav- 

 ers, 1908, p. 181), to the "appetitus sensitivus" of the schoolmen 

 (see Maher, 1903, Chap. 10), and the oge^ig and to ogextixov 

 of Aristotle (De Anim. 3, 10; Eth. Nic. 1, 13, 18). Recently the 

 behavioristic psychologists, psychopathologists and students of 

 the sympathetic nervous system and internal secretions, Mosso 

 (1899), Drever (1917), Smith and Guthrie (1921), Goddard 

 (1919),Kempf (1918),Crile (1915), Cannon (1915), and others, 

 have emphasized the importance of the appetites and others have 

 stressed their peculiarities in such terms as "tumescence" and 



