REGULATORY PROCESSES IN ORGANISMS 193 
organism, in a period of increased metabolism may remove the 
structural evidences of past metabolism. 
In the present state of our knowledge we should think it absurd 
to attempt to account for the configuration of the banks and bed 
of the river without taking into account the action of the current. 
It would remain a miracle, which we could ascribe to the caprice 
or other quality of a personal creator, or to some other mysterious 
natural force. In the same way, when we attempt to interpret the 
structure of organisms without direct reference at every step to the 
current of energy of which the structure is evidence, we must neces-’ 
sarily go astray or end in confusion or in the most bizarre hypothe- 
ses. We can do as Driesch has done and shift the burden to the 
shoulders of entelechy, to which we can ascribe such qualities as 
may please us. Or we can speak of biophores and determinants, 
pangens, or whatever we please to call them, or we may pin our 
faith to the visible chromosomes, but these are nothing but 
creators of a type which appeals to certain minds. 
On the other hand, when we take as ourstarting point the process 
of metabolism, we are proceeding as the physiographer has learned 
to proceed in his study of rivers. As we learn how metabolism 
produces structure we shall be able more and more completely to 
interpret the nature and the past history of the organism from its 
structure, but at every step we must return to the process, the 
current, in order to understand, and we can never hope to under- 
stand all through structure, simply because structure is an incom- 
plete record. Life is first of all an energy process, a flowing current. 
All that is relatively stable, all that persists as visible form and 
structure, represents merely some past action of the current 
occurring under certain conditions. Almostsixty years ago Huxley 
said concerning the cells: ‘‘They are no more the producers of the 
vital phenomena than the shells scattered along the sea-beach are 
the instruments by which the gravitative force of the moon acts 
upon the ocean. Like these, the cells mark only where the vital’ 
tides have been, and how they have acted.’’* And even yet the 
truth of these words is not recognized as it should be by biologists. 
* British and Foreign Medico-chirurgical Review, vol. 12, p. 314, Oct. 1853. 
Cited from Whitman, the inadequacy of the cell-theory, Jour. Morph., vol. 8, 1893. 
