Why is it necessary to make such a distinction at all? And why necessary to move back and forth between the two provisional standpoints? Dewey might answer by the following analogy: The thought function may be studied, first of all, as a special organ, as an anatomist might study the structure of any special organ of the body; but in order to understand the part played by this member in the organism as a whole, it would be necessary to adopt a wider view, so that its place in the system could be determined. This is probably what Dewey means by his two standpoints. He says: "We keep our paths straight because we do not confuse the sequential, efficient, and functional relationship of types of experience with the contemporaneous, correlative, and structural distinctions of elements within a given function."[189] The first objection to be made to this treatment of thought is that it makes knowing the activity of a special organ, like liver or lungs. If this objection is surmounted, there remains another from the side of general method. The biologist not only studies the particular organs as to their structure and their relationships within the body, but he has a view of the body as a whole, of its general end and purpose. His study of the particular organ is in part determined by his knowledge of the relations between body and environment. But experience as a whole cannot be treated like a body, because it has no environment. The analogy between body and its processes and experience and its processes breaks down, therefore, at a vital point. Dewey's genetic interpretation gains in plausibility when the human body, and not the whole of experience, is taken as the ground upon which the 'functions' are to be explained, for the body has an environment and purposes in relation to that environment. Experience as a whole possesses no such external reference. It will be seen that Dewey's interpretation of the function of knowing is not as empirical as it proposes to be. Its underlying conceptions are biological in character, and these conceptions are brought ready-made to the study of thought. Logical theory does not arise naturally and spontaneously from a study of the facts of mind, but the facts are aligned and interpreted in terms of categories selected in advance. Empiricism develops its theories in connection with facts, but rationalism (in the bad sense of the word) fits the facts into prepared theories. Dewey's treatment of thought is, after all, more rationalistic than empirical.