to achieve but if it is inert the adaptation is at the lowest level of efficiency. The individual then unconsciously, and quite likely unintentionally, expends his energy so grudgingly that he meets the minimum requirements of his work, or fails, as did Patrick Henry until he chanced upon a vocation that aroused all his latent powers. Here, then, is the psychological significance of adaptation. Let us consider it somewhat further.

As we ascend the animal series organisms become more complex. These higher forms represent the animals that have been able to adapt themselves to a wider range of conditions. The circle of requirements has enlarged. The change has not been sudden. Neither has it been conscious. It has been a blind struggle for survival. If the change is too rapid or the required alteration too great the animals cannot make the adaptation and the species perishes. Those that succeeded have built their new lives upon the graves of incapables. The trail through the prehistoric jungle to modern times is strewn with the remains of animals that failed to qualify for new requirements.

Education, in its broadest meaning, consists in coming into such rapport with the environment as to meet successfully the exigencies which arise. Adjustment is always an element in education, and in the lowest forms of life that is all there is to it. At this stage, then, education is wholly a matter of organic adaptation which results in physiological modification. The animal reacts differently to new conditions-behaves differently-because it is physiologically different. The education of man differs from that of the lower animals in the inclusion of factors which play no part in the development of lower forms of life. Adaptation, however, is no less forceful in its requirements and no less effective in producing alteration. Only now the changes are mental as well as physiological. Al Jennings, the reformed bandit and train-robber, and former leader of the once famous "Jennings Gang,"

has given an interesting illustration of adaptation from his own life. "I am always surprising my friends," he says, "by deductions which they take for a kind of clairvoyant instinct. For example, I will be sitting with a group of a dozen people having a talk. Some one will look up and say: 'Why, where's John gone?' No one but me will know. I can always tell when and how he left the room. Usually I have learned by his expression and gesture what made him leave, and all that without losing any of my absorption in the conversation. It wasn't so before I took the road; I got the habit in prison. That my old crimes raised me from a rough country practitioner to a real lawyer I haven't the slightest doubt." 1

The writer doubts whether it was prison life which awakened his dormant mind. Daily, relentless need for the minutest observation and most rigorously exact interpretation of persons and events outside of prison did the work. Heavy rewards upon his head severely strained the loyalty of friends. Failure to read their faces, when forced by need of food to accept hospitality, meant capture or death. Illustrations are not wanting in his book. "If there were two men in the whole territory on whom I depended, they were Sam Baker and Red Hereford. I stopped at Baker's on my way out. His wife told me that he had gone to find us boys. Her manner made me a little suspicious. When presently Baker came in he seemed cordial enough, but he asked where we were going, approaching the subject indirectly. Curiosity about the other fellow's whereabouts wasn't etiquette in our set. The next day I made Red Hereford's with Bill, whom I'd met on the road. There, also, the atmosphere had changed. It wasn't what he said-it was his manner."

The game of adaptation is two-sided and the player must keep up with it. A changing, uncertain environment makes demands upon those in it, and an active mind 1 Beating Back, by Al Jennings and Will Irwin, pp. 310 ƒƒ.

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responds with its adaptations and reconstructions. Those who cannot meet the issues succumb either by suffering the supreme penalty of failure or by dropping to a lower level, where the less exacting demands can be met. In Al Jennings' world of that day the latter meant becoming cattle rustlers or ordinary thieves. To remain in the criminal aristocracy required intellect and bravery. Both of these Jennings had, and they came out when needed.

Prison-life adaptation is more likely to cause deterioration than to develop mental keenness. Robert Louis Stevenson observed this effect. "For it is strange," he says,1 "how grown men and seasoned soldiers can go back in life; so that after but a little while in prison, which is after all the next thing to being in the nursery, they grow absorbed in the most pitiful, childish interests, and a sugar biscuit or a pinch of snuff becomes a thing to follow after and scheme for."

The sharpening of his intellect, which Jennings attributes to his life "on the road" and in prison, came from the need of the fullest development of all of his powers of perception, interpretation, and reasoning. Self-preservation is a stern and effective teacher. The conditions of his life called for certain responses-behavior—which were possible only as the result of functional changes. These changes were largely in the nervous system. He saw more, interpreted better what he saw, and reasoned more correctly on the basis of his interpretation.

That it is possible to see much more than is usually observed has been proven by Pfungst in his investigation of "Clever Hans," the so-called educated horse.2 Without any further practice than was involved in making the experiments, Pfungst, playing the part of the horse, was able to see and interpret the unconscious movements of the persons, who thought three numbers together with their 1 St. Ives, p. 2. See also My Life in Prison, by Donald Lowrie. 2 Clever Hans, by Oscar Pfungst, 1911.

sum, so as to determine the order in which the numbers were mentally added. For example, a man thought of 12 as 5 + 5 + 2 and as 2 + 5 + 5, and Pfungst, as he tapped off the number with his hand, could determine by watching the man which order the number took in his mind. The significance for interpreting events of this sharpened observation and inference is obvious.

Adaptation to a changed environment is also seen in the altered conduct of States-prison convicts when placed under new conditions. These striking changes, which often amount to a revolution in the character of the prisoners, are so much a matter of general knowledge to-day that it is only necessary to refer to them. In Colorado, convicts have been employed making roads two hundred miles from the prison. The men were housed in tents and dugouts, away from the towns near at hand, and the camps were guarded only to keep away tramps and prowlers who might attack the commissary or carry away other property. "For a long time the only man who carried firearms in one of these camps was a long-time prisoner who patrolled the place for the above reason. We have now" [when the letter was written] "three hundred men employed away from the walls, and yet in the last eight months only one man has escaped."

...

Mr. Fremont Older, of the San Francisco Bulletin, has a former stage-robber as manager of his ranch. "He is absolutely honest and could be trusted with a million dollars. He has served four terms, aggregating thirty-eight years, for stage robbery and highway robbery, and he was considered the worst man in California." Evidently adaptation has a wide reach in making and remaking men. Perhaps the explanation of the change in these convicts when placed under a new environment is to be found in

1 Information contained in a letter from Warden Tynan. Used with permission.

2 From a personal letter. Used with permission.

a statement of an Oregon convict. Governor West was convinced that the shoe-shop of the penitentiary was inefficient. So he telephoned the warden and asked that a prisoner, whom he designated by number, be sent to him. The convict came unguarded. He was told that he should go to Oregon City, study the machinery of the shoe-shops, and report on what was needed to make those of the penitentiary efficient. He went, again unguarded, and on his return told the governor what was necessary to make the prison shoe-shops modern. The governor then said to him: "Now, you're in for life, a murderer. You have tried to get away before. Why didn't you try it this time?" "Well, I'll tell you, governor. I've tried it before. This would have been a pipe for sure. But it's the first time since I can remember that a man trusted me. I couldn't throw you down."

These human pictures represent men's physiological and mental reorganization in a changed environment. They are wholly comparable to the adaptations of lower animals. Habits and actions-behavior viewed in the large are not isolated states. They are responses to environmental situations, and they can be rightly appraised only when considered in relation to these environing conditions. Behavior involves two factors, the organism, and the objects or circumstances that it faces. The external conditions demand adaptive response. At one time this demand imposes the penalty of death for failure to meet it, and at another the ridicule of associates with all the anguish that accompanies ostracism.

The human will is not resistless. It is influenced by racial and individual traits, some of which originated in needs quite different from those of the present day. Consequently, the adjustment of action to environment is at times imperfect. Primitive man, like his animal ancestors,

1 New York Times, May 2, 1912. Verified by a letter from the secretary of former Governor West.