REGULATORY PROCESSES IN ORGANISMS 185 
its action andasthey accumulate, alter and determine the character 
of its activity. In other words, as the products are formed they 
becomea part of the machine. Starting with the egg, the organism 
is not, as Driesch asserts that it must be according to the ‘machine 
theory,’ a machine developed for function (Driesch, ’05, p. 790), 
but rather a machine developed by function. The result at any 
stage represents morphologically the products of a preéxisting 
machine and physiologically the action of the machine as altered 
from the preceding stage by the products of its own activity. 
Each stage of development is the result of the machine plus the 
product of the preceding stage. Our experiments have shown 
that physiological correlation, not predetermined harmony is the 
basis of development, and that where a predetermined harmony 
appears to exist it is certainly in some cases, probably in others, 
the result of an earlier condition of correlation. 
On the basis of this conception of the organism it is inconceiva- 
ble that processes of adjustment of the parts to each other, 7. e., 
processes of equilibration, should not occur, both in development 
in nature and under experimental conditions. The parts are what 
they are, not simply because of their original constitution, but 
because they have been acting in correlation with each other. 
From the moment the organic machine began to work in the first 
organism ‘adjustment’ of the parts to each other began aad it has 
continued ever since. Could we but read it completely, every 
part is a record, an epitome, more or less complete according to 
circumstances, of what has been going on, not merely in itself, 
but in the whole organism. Moreover, in different parts this 
record is written in different characters, in different languages, 
according to the constitution of the part. 
The distinction which Roux makes between the formative and 
the functional periods of development (Roux, 795, II, p. 281), is, 
according to this view, not fundamental in character. The for- 
mative period is functional and the functional period is formative. 
But this distinction is based upon the fact that at a certain more or 
less sharply defined stage of development the accumulated products 
of the activity of the machine begin to play a more or less definite 
role in its further physical and chemical activity. The adult 
