No. 514] 



NOTES AND LITERATURE 



cisely my endeavor to show just how each phase was determined 

 so as to show that "there is no evidence that a final aim is glid- 

 ing the organism. " ,T The application of the phrase "trial and 

 error" to lower organisms arose as follows: The organisms react 

 to changes in the conditions by movements of a peculiar char- 

 acter, which subject them to various environmental changes. 

 Some of these changes cause them to react further, still further 

 changing the conditions. Finally, as a rule, their continued 

 movements bring them into conditions which do not cause them 

 to react by further movements; since they do not read further 

 they remain in these conditions. There is. as 1 have repeatedly 

 attempted to show, evident experimental cause for every detail 

 of this behavior. 



havior, for an adequate objective cause exists. 18 



throw a net about it, gathering it together, so as to -rasp its 

 essential points, to the exclusion of unessential details. I have 

 often characterized it as the selection of certain environmental 

 conditions as a result of varied movements. For a briefer 

 phrase, T found in common use for hehavior in higher animals 

 that is objectively similar, the expression "trial and error," so 

 I employed this, specifying with the greatest care that it was 

 only the similarity in objective features that I desired to bring 

 out. 19 Later developments have shown that the designation was 



ing the phenomena on which a concept is based from other 

 things that may be intermingled with it in particular cases are 

 inclined to read into it in every case all that may occur in con- 

 nection with it in any case ; this seems to be Bohn's method of 

 procedure. Other authors have found no difficulty in grasping 

 the point involved; so Driesch in his recent volumes on the 

 "Science and Philosophy of the Organism"; and Pillsbury in 



to the Study of the Behavior of the Lower Organisms," 1904, p. 252; 

 " The Behavior of Paramecium," Joum. Comp. Neurol, and Psychol, 14, 

 1904, p. 461. 



20 Pop. Sci. Monthly, 1906, pp. 277-28 



