REGULATORY PROCESSES IN ORGANISMS 195 
My purpose in laying special emphasis upon the point that regu- 
lation is an essential characteristic of life and that life must cease 
when regulation ceases, is merely to show that the extreme forms 
of regulation, which occur under experimental or accidental con- 
ditions, are in no way different from the processes of life apart 
from experimental or accidental interference. The capacity for 
regulation is not something secondary or something acquired in 
the course of evolution, but it is as inseparable from life itself as 
the power of equilibration from the flow of the river. Notonly life 
but the universe is an unceasing series of regulations. Every 
experimental investigation performed with living organisms is, 
so far as it does not lead to the death of the organism, an investiga- 
tion of organic regulation, and death itself is an equilibration, 
though of another type. 
To set the regulations off as a special category of phenomena, 
occurring only in organisms and of secondary or incidental signi- 
ficance in these, must of necessity lead to conclusions of the same 
character and value as those which would be reached by one who 
should attempt to investigate the phenomena of equilibration in 
the river, without considering the flow or the resistance of its 
banks and bed. Such a one would doubtless marvel at the won- 
derful harmony of action displayed by the simultaneous disap- 
pearance of a part of the bank and the encroachment of the water 
upon it, or by the appearance of an island and the division of the 
river into two channels. He would doubtless call attention to the 
remarkable fact that both the channel and the river were narrow 
and deep at some points and broad and shallow at others. He 
might wonder why stones moved along where the bed was steep 
and only fine particles where it was nearly horizontal. If he were 
of an investigating turn of mind, he might throw stones into the 
river and observe the consequences, or he might dig a ditch and 
turn part of the water into it. Thus he would observe further 
remarkable harmonies of action. If he were inclined to look for 
causes, he would probably conclude that the complex of phenom- 
ena was determined and controlled by some mysterious being 
or principle, which, judging from his own ability to bring about 
harmony of action between different things in his world, he would 
