REGULATORY PROCESSES IN ORGANISMS 187 
and the structural features which its activity has produced. Asthe 
banks and the channel are ‘adjusted’ to the activity of the current, 
and the current to the morphological characteristics of the banks 
and bed, so, and in no otherwise are structure and function in the 
organism, correlated with each other. It is absolutely inconceiva- 
ble that ‘adjustment,’ equilibration should not occur. So long 
- as the current flows, equilibration must take place in one way or 
another. ; 
The organism has often been compared to a flame. Roux par- 
ticularly has carried out this comparison in detail (Roux, 05, p. 
109, et seq.). Although this analogy contains much that is valua- 
ble and on the chemical side is much closer than that of the river, 
yet on the other hand the morphological features of the river are 
more nearly comparable to those of the organism, {n their locali- 
zation, their often complex structure and their modifying effect 
upon the activity of the current. For these reasons I have chosen 
the river rather than the flame as a physico-chemical system with 
which the organism may be compared. 
When we take the view of the organism suggested above, I 
believe that Driesch’s first two proofs of the autonomy of vital 
processes (Driesch, ’03, p. 74, ete. Cf. also p. 197 below) appear in 
their proper light. They apply only to the morphological con- 
ception of the organism as a machine constructed for function, 
2. e., to the banks and channel without the river. In the organism 
the current is working from the beginning, the organism is func- 
tioning in one way or another, and the real machine is the process, 
the function, plus the existing structure which past processes have 
produced, just as in the case of the river the real machine is the 
current plus the banks and channel. The process of development 
in the organism is comparable, not to the digging of a channel into 
which, after its completion, the water is turned, but to the forma- 
tion of a channel with certain characteristics determined by a 
variety of conditions, by the activity of the current itself. From 
the moment the current begins to flow, structure and function 
become mutually interdependent and mutually determining, 
but there can be no river-structure without the current. Machines 
like the steam engine, constructed by man and considered without 
JOURNAL OF MORPHOLOGY, VOL. 22, No. 2 
