No. 554] ADAPTATION IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING 77 



sider the phenomenon of cell division as just as capable 

 of analysis as is that of a chemical reaction like flame; 

 and we are sure that there have been in the past (and are 

 indeed at present) minds to which flame would appear 

 quite as hopeless of analysis as does cell division to us. 

 I have said that the qualities of living things are too 

 complex for analysis at present, I might as well have 

 said that we are at present too ignorant and too feeble to 

 analyze such qualities. Our science is young yet, not in 

 years, perhaps, nor yet in absolute achievement, but in 

 the relation of its present phase of development to the 

 task which is set before it. It appears to be this youth- 

 ful quality in biology which may partially explain, as I 

 have said, the somewhat startling generalization with 

 which we began. 



Active Adaptations. — Biological writing employs the 

 term adaptation in an active sense as well as in the pas- 

 sive one heretofore considered in this paper, and it re- 

 mains to give some attention to this usage, and to an ap- 

 parent confusion of cause and effect which is connected 

 therewith. To obtain a clearly legitimate case of active 

 adaptation we shall have to turn to human affairs, for 

 reasons which will soon be evident, and the familiar 

 adaptation of the watch will serve our need as well as 

 any other. The little machine is complex, too complex 

 for most of us to understand, and it seems to be much 

 better adapted than any living thing to long-continued, 

 uniform motion of a certain specified kind. If I make in- 

 quiry regarding the causes, or antecedent conditions, to 

 which this adaptation is due, I find that the various parts 

 have been made and assembled with reference to the very 

 adaptation which I am investigating. In my search after 

 causal relations I have been entrapped in a mesh of un- 

 investigated psychological phenomena and have discov- 

 ered the puzzling truth that the watch is what it is, 

 simply because it was to be what it is! In other words, 

 the cause of the effect which we are considering is re- 

 garded as some sort of disembodied spirit of the effect 



