ADAPTATION 



197 



mentation. We can foresee the results of an action, oiily 

 in so far as they have been experienced lioforc, citlnT in 

 a situation identical with the present one, or at least in 

 situations having certain elements in common with it. 

 Furthermore, in the early life of the individual, the 

 movements of the so-called ''voluntary" muscles were 

 in a high degree random and undirected. The associa- 

 tion between a given muscular contraction and a given 

 result in consciousness must, in the first instance, have 

 been purely arbitrary, and could not have been antici- 

 pated prior to experience. 



Thus to restate somewhat paradoxically our original 

 proposition, an intelligent animal attains a sought-for 

 end, either by blundering into it or by directing its course 

 on the basis of past blunders. In eitlier ease, the asso- 

 ciation between the means employed and tlie end attained 

 is, in the last resort, accidental. At tlie outset, the idea of 

 the end did not in any direct way call fortli tlie means to 

 its realization, liowcvci- ] )iir| losivc tlic action nniy appear 

 when fully perfected. 



Let US extend onr argnnient to those Ileitis of organic 

 activity from which intelligence seems to be largely or 

 wholly excluded. In instinctive actions, even more than 

 in intelligent ones, a series of movements proceeds unfal- 

 teringly to a given end, as if directed by the latter. In 

 earlier days the adaptive instincts of certain lower ani- 

 mals furnished some of the most telling arguments for 

 the special interposition of an all-wise Providence. To- 

 day, as biologists, we commonly explain these movements 

 on the basis of an inherited ''mechanism." We may be- 

 lieve, with Loeb and others, that we have to do with a 

 chain of reflexes, each serving as a stimulus to call forth 

 its successor at the np])ropriate moment. 



How this nn'clinnism arose is a disputed point, but 

 there are two ]irinci])al hypotheses as to its origin: (1) 

 Instincti\-e actions are ones which originated, iiitelli- 



rience, and linally l)ecame lixt-d through heredity; and 



