ny means of achieving the same end they make a
definite choice, and different plants make different choices--they use
different means.

Plants, therefore, quite evidently employ means to an end. They
have an end in view--sometimes their own maintenance, sometimes
the perpetuation of their kind, sometimes something else--and they
employ means to achieve that end. They are, that is to say,
_purposive_ in their nature.

* * *

Evidence of purposiveness is also furnished by the wonderful organs
of adaptation, root-tips, leaves, eyes, lungs, etc. It is extremely
improbable that they came into being--or even started to come into
being--by mere chance alone. The odds are countless millions to one
against the atoms, molecules, and cells--myriads in number--of any
one of these organs of adaptation having by mere chance grouped
themselves in such a way as to form an effective eye, or lung, or leaf.
It is, literally speaking, infinitely improbable that the organs of
adaptation we see in a forest, in plant and animal, should have come
into existence through chance alone.

The organs of adaptation are distinctly and definitely purposive
structures--not purposed, perhaps, but certainly purposeful. In its
struggle with its surroundings and with competitors the individual
has been compelled to bring into being organs to fulfil a purpose. It
is not the case that the organ was first created and then a use found
for it, or use made of it. What actually happens is that first there is a
vague but insistent reaching out towards an end, towards the
fulfilment of some inner want or need--the need for food or to
propagate, or whatever it may be--and that to achieve that end, or
fulfil that need, the individual is driven to create a special
organisation--as an Air Ministry was created during the War to fulfil
the new need for fighting in the air--and so a new organ is produced:
an essentially purposive structure such as the eye or the lung, though
unpurposed before the need arose. The organs we see, therefore, are
outward and visible signs of the existence within of a definite
striving towards an end--that is, of a purpose.

The forest shows an abundant, varied, and intense life in which
individuals are for ever battling with one another. But all is not
happening by chance. Everywhere we see signs of purposiveness.
Purposiveness--the striving towards an end--stands out as a
dominating feature in forest life. Selections and adaptations are