An article published in the _Monist_, in 1898, on "Evolution and Ethics,"[138] deserves special attention. The central thought of the article is to be found in the following passage: "The belief that natural selection has ceased to operate [in the human sphere] rests upon the assumption that there is only one form of such selection: that where improvement is indirectly effected by the failure of species of a certain type to continue to reproduce; carrying with it as its correlative that certain variations continue to multiply, and finally come to possess the land. This ordeal by death is an extremely important phase of natural selection, so called.... However, to identify this procedure absolutely with selection, seems to me to indicate a somewhat gross and narrow vision. Not only is one form of life as a whole selected at the expense of other forms, _but one mode of action in the same individual is constantly selected at the expense of others_. There is not only the trial by death, but there is the trial by the success or failure of special acts--the counterpart, I suppose, of physiological selection so called."[139] We have here a refinement upon the doctrine of natural selection. The keynote of Dewey's new psychology is a process of selection constantly occurring within the individual organism. He points out that, in dealing with man, we have a highly adaptable, not merely a highly adapted animal. "It is certainly implied in the idea of natural selection that the most effective modes of variation should themselves be finally selected."[140] The capacity to vary, or adapt, is highly developed in man. Through these variations, the organism is able to react against the environment, changing its character quite completely. The environment of the modern human is tremendously complicated by his reaction upon it. "The growth of science, its application in invention to industrial life, the multiplication and acceleration of means of transportation and intercommunication, have created a peculiarly unstable environment."[141] Under these conditions, the ability of the individual to adapt himself to changing circumstances is largely determined by his degree of flexibility in the selection of right acts and responses. "In the present environment, flexibility of function, the enlargement of the range of uses to which one and the same organ, grossly considered, may be put, is a great, almost the supreme, condition of success."[142] The human mind is to be interpreted as a highly developed organ whose special function is to make adaptation more flexible and response more varied and discriminating. "That which was 'tendency to vary' in the animal is conscious foresight in man. That which was unconscious adaptation and survival in the animal, taking place by the 'cut and try' method until it worked itself out, is with man conscious deliberation and experimentation."[143]