quently, these simple animals have undergone little change. Their surroundings have put upon them few new requirements which called for adaptive reconstruction.

The history of animals from the lowest to man reveals continuous, though more or less interrupted, changes, resulting from the attempt to maintain harmonious relations between the organism and its environment. A certain equilibrium must be established between external forces acting upon the individual and his responses. Maintaining this equilibrium is what is meant by adaptation. Among the lower animals we have seen that strict conformity is the rule. Any change that takes place is forced upon them by the exigencies of their surrounding conditions. Few reconstruct their environment to any great extent before adapting themselves to it, and any reconstruction that they make is explained by some earlier adjustment which has become fixed in them as an instinct.

Man, on the other hand, because of the superior development of his brain, possesses greatly increased ability to alter his environment. In certain lines he has practically made over the world in which he lives. The changes growing out of the natural sciences have been stupendous, but in many other matters his "thinking" has been largely drifting. It is the same sort of involuntary, uncontrolled adaptation that is characteristic of the lower animals; and the reasons for this are the pressing demands for immediate adjustment which is as much a human as an animal requirement, and the fact that reconstruction of the environment to enable the adaptation to be more intelligent calls for an expenditure of energy which man is loath to meet. Now efficiency requires that the quantity of intelligence in human adaptations be increased. But let us see how adaptation works out in the actual affairs of life.

When a young man starts on his business or professional career he is at once confronted with certain obstaclesdifficulties to be overcome. If he is a lawyer the obstacle

may be the unwillingness of a witness to reveal facts with which he is familiar. Now there are different ways of approaching a witness, and one acquainted with human personalities knows that certain methods are successful in dealing with some men and worthless with others. It is almost certain, however, that the young attorney will adopt a method that expresses his own personality rather than that of the witness. In other words, his attitude and manner of questioning will be an unconscious adaptation to the difficulties that arise. Soon this form of behavior toward witnesses becomes an established adaptation. This is shown by the fact that lawyers are often described as relentlessly severe or as gentle and insinuating, leading the witness kindly to unforeseen admissions.

If we say that we know when we succeed in what we are engaged upon, the statement must be qualified by adding that the standard of achievement may be low. Many college students, for instance, "succeed" if they obtain the "gentleman's grade" of mediocrity. For them it is sufficient to have just missed the lowest passing mark. A certain summer school, to illustrate further, celebrated an increase of twenty-five students over the preceding year. Yet the surrounding territory should furnish two or three times as many students as the school ever had. And, again, a salesman recently said with great elation that his sales for the year exceeded those of a fellow traveller whose record, the writer happened to know, was in the lowest third of those made by the salesmen in the organization. Since this relative success is the selective force in determining the adaptations it is clear that the result may be altogether inadequate to the needs and possibilities of the situation. There is, however, a further fact of immense importance to adaptation. The human environment is not static. "There is no standing still in the business world to-day," said the president of a large manufacturing plant recently. "Everything is in continual change, so

that a man no sooner adapts himself to one set of conditions than he must readapt himself to others. Those who cannot do so fall behind the more versatile. One of the largest manufacturers of engines failed to grasp the significance of the steam-turbine. The management sat still while other companies brought it to a successful commercial basis."

Methods of doing the day's work also bring their problems of organization and co-ordination. There is an enormous amount of overlapping of duties and responsibilities. A large furniture manufactory spent several days trying to determine the responsibility for failure to do a given piece of work satisfactorily and promptly. Each department concerned blamed another, and in the end no one was satisfied. Such inefficiency produces continual financial loss and frequent dissatisfaction both within the organization and with customers.

Success in business, as in other matters, requires that conflicts be adjusted and difficulties overcome. Now the solution may be delayed until the problem is thought out. Then the several ways that suggest themselves may be thought through so as to determine how they would work out in practice. Again, one of the more promising solutions may be put to the actual test of a preliminary trial to determine what errors had been overlooked. As a matter of fact, however, a man commonly uses neither of these methods. The idea in mind is the somewhat general notion of success, and the first method that seems to meet the exigencies of the situation is usually adopted. But the exigencies that are met are the immediate ones, those that are pressing for solution at the moment. The result is that the more remote, related conflicts are not adjusted. This was the case in the overlapping of responsibilities in the furniture factory to which we have referred.

When we ask what determines the selection of the plan or method of meeting difficulties that arise in business or

in the professions, we come upon an important fact in human psychology. The obstacle that confronts us must be overcome, and the method employed is commonly the first one that promises to attain the desired result. The situation is urgent and there is always a tendency to meet it with an economical use of energy. This frugality of energy does not indicate intentional slighting of difficulties. It is a phase of unreflective adaptation to them. In the acquisition of skill, where we shall see it playing a leading rôle, this adaptation is so strictly unconscious that the learner is not aware of the particular method which he has adopted for meeting a difficulty until he finds himself using it with more or less success.

Now it is significant for efficiency that the method unconsciously adopted, in the unreflective adaptation of which we have been speaking, is not always the best. Out of six young men learning the juggler's feat of tossing two balls into the air, catching and tossing one before the other reached the hand, the writer found that only two adopted successful devices for avoiding "collisions" in the air, which was the difficulty they were trying to meet. The other four used methods which soon ended in failure. All six found themselves employing devices before they were aware of the attempt. The plan unconsciously adopted to meet an emergency, in acts of skill, is usually the one requiring the least expenditure of energy. A very small matter may be the determining cause. Unselected actions follow the line of least resistance. So a business

man attends to a matter of detail. It must be done at once, as it is an integral part of what he is engaged upon. To explain the matter to a clerk would require more time and energy at the moment than to do it himself. Consequently, he attends to the matter, and soon attention to details has become a habit. This adaptation is quite as unconscious as those which have been noted in acts of muscular skill. In both cases they are attempts to meet

quickly an emergency, and the most available methodthe easiest at the moment-is unconsciously employed.

This mode of overcoming obstacles is the "trial-anderror" method. The term was first used to designate the manner in which animals attack a problem. They do not stop to think the matter over, but go right at it, trying one way after another in rapid succession until they either obtain the desired result or become discouraged and stop. The means which they employ are determined by specific inheritance or individual experience. If a dog, for example, within an enclosure sees food he will probably first stick his head between the bars; next he is likely to jump up and paw the bars; then he does something else until he finally hits upon the right combination for getting out and obtaining the meat. Afterward, by degrees, the useless actions are eliminated,1 and the dog performs only those acts necessary to secure the food.

It is commonly assumed that there is a sharp distinction in this respect between the actions of animals and man. The one does not reason, it is said, and the other does. As a matter of fact, man does not reason as much as he thinks he does. Perhaps this explains why he calls himself a reasoning animal. He reasons so seldom that he likes to call attention to the little that he does. Children, for example, in learning to write use the trial-and-error method in determining the posture of the body and the movements in the writing. Of course it is used unconsciously, as in the other instances of which we have spoken. This is always the case in unreflective-unconsciousadaptation. The finger movement is the quickest way of getting results, and since it attains the desired end passably well, it is used unless the teacher is insistent. That the arm movement in the long run is less fatiguing and produces a better writer does not avail unless the beginner

1 For a full treatment of this subject, see Behavior, by John B. Watson, pp. 256 f.