REGULATORY PROCESSES IN ORGANISMS 199 
THE REGULATORY PROCESSES 
1. The relation between form regulation and functional 
regulation 
A distinction between regulations of form and regulations of 
function has very commonly been made. As might be expected 
from his conception of the organism, Driesch (’01) has attempted 
to draw the line very sharply. But if we adopt the point of view 
suggested above the distinction becomes apparent rather than 
real. First of all every regulation in organisms is primarily an 
energetic process and secondly, it occurs in a certain structure 
and must affect that structure to a greater or less extent. On the 
other hand, every change in structure must lead to a regulation 
of function. Structural and functional regulation are in fact insep- 
arable in organisms. If we go further and interpret structure in 
terms of the constructive energy, we may say that all regulations 
are essentially functional, 7. e., energetic. 
It is sufficiently evident from what has been said, that the flow 
of energy in the organism is essential for regulation, and that the 
structure must play a part in determining its character. It should 
be possible, therefore, to interpret the regulatory processes in 
terms of the energy current, 7. e., metabolism, and the preéxisting 
structure. To refer again to the analogy of the river, both the 
channel and the current are involved to a greater or less extent in 
each equilibration in the system. The distinetioa between form 
regulation and functional regulation is then in part conventional 
and connected with the separation of morphology and physiology 
from each other, and in part a matter of convenience, since some 
regulatory processes involve the visible structure to a much greater 
extent than others. As in the classification of other natural phe- 
nomena, we separate for convenience of thought or reference a 
graded series into anumber of (in this case two) different classes. 
2. The inducing conditions and the results 
As already noted, the first factor in regulation is a change of 
some sort in the external conditions affecting the system. In the 
