214 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
process ever returning upon itself, but the fact that the individual is conscious of this interrelated process constantly repeating itself of the whole process as maintained by its parts and the parts as deriving their meaning from the whole that is signi- ficant at this point. In other words, the ends are ends for a conscious being; they are subjective.
But certain aspects of experience are objectified by the experi- encing individual. There are the physiological processes respiration, digestion, circulation, etc. These are thought of as being bodily processes, and the ends which they subserve as bodily ends. Respiration is to purify the blood; digestion is to furnish suitable material for the building up of the tissues ; circulation is to carry needed materials to the tissues and to remove wastes. The process and the function are both stated objectively. Of course, such terms as " function," " purpose," " end," and " means " can have no real meaning outside of the experience of the subjective, or reflective, individual. When a function or end is stated objectively, the reflective individual is just taken for granted without being brought directly into consideration. When the physiologist says that the end of respiration is the purification of the blood, he means that it does practically have the effect of changing the character of the blood in a certain way. The under- lying assumption is that this change is in some way evaluated in consciousness. It is just this assumption that makes it possible to conceive of the human body as really organic. That is, in order to conceive of it as really organic, it is necessary to make it, not a whole, but an abstracted part, the whole being the unity of experience. From a purely objective standpoint, however, it is possible merely to assume and ignore the conscious side, imputing organic wholeness to the body itself; but when this is done, the term "organic" undergoes a corresponding change of meaning.
Now, plants resemble the human bodily organism in certain important respects. In both there is a certain circuitous, self- reinstating process. Each partial process conditions each of the others and is conditioned by them. The process returns upon itself through a series of changes. In the one there are the partial processes of generation, birth, nutrition, growth, etc., mutually
