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THE AMEBIC AN NATTJBAL1ST [Vol. XLIX 



generation. Moreover, the adaptation must, as I pointed 

 out before, tend to be progressive, for each successive 

 generation builds upon a foundation of accumulated ex- 

 perience and has a better start than its predecessors. 



Of course natural selection plays its part, as it must 

 in all cases, even in the organic world, and I believe 

 that in many cases — as, for example, in protective re- 

 semblance and mimicry — that part has been an extremely 

 important one. But much more important than natural 

 selection appears to me what Baldwin 8 has termed 

 11 Functional Selection," selection by the organism itself, 

 out of a number of possible reactions, of just those that 

 are required to meet any emergency. As Baldwin puts 

 it, "It is the organism which secures from all its over- 

 produced movements those which are adaptive and bene- 

 ficial." Natural selection is here replaced by intelligent 

 selection, for I think we must agree with Jennings 9 that 

 we can not make a distinction between the higher and 

 the lower organisms in this respect, and that all purposive 

 reactions, or adjustments, are essentially intelligent. 



Surely that much-abused philosopher, Lamarck, was 

 not far from the truth when he said, "The production 

 of a new organ in an animal body results from a new 

 requirement which continues to make itself felt, and 

 from a new movement which this requirement begets 

 and maintains." 10 Is not this merely another way of 

 saying that the individual makes adaptive responses to 

 environmental stimuli? Where so many people fall foul 

 of Lamarck is with regard to his belief in the inheri- 

 tance of acquired characters. But in speaking of ac- 

 quired characters Lamarck did not refer to such modifi- 

 cations as mutilations; he was obviously talking of the 

 gradual self-adjustment of the organism to its environ- 

 ment. 



■ " Development and Evolution » (New York, 1902), p. 87. 

 9" Behavior of the Lower Organisms " (New York, 1906), pp. 334, 335. 

 io" Histoire naturelle des Animaux sans Vertebres," Tom. I, 1815, p. 

 185. 



