INHERITANCE 217 



psychological point of view. If he is a " parallelist " with 

 regard to so-called psychical phenomena, he would use the 

 word memory only as a sort of collective term to signify 

 a resultant effect of many single mechanical events, as far as 

 the material world of his parallel system comes into account, 

 with which of course the problem of inheritance alone deals ; 

 but if he maintains the theory of so-called psycho-physical 

 interaction, the psychical would be to him a primary factor 

 in nature, and so also would memory. As we have said, it 

 is by no means clear in what sense the word " memory ' 

 is used by our authors, and therefore the most important 

 point about the matter in question must remain in dubio. 



But another topic is even more clear in the theory of 

 inheritance, as stated in Hering's and Semon's writings. 

 The hypothetical fact that so-called " acquired characters ' 

 are inherited is undoubtedly the chief assumption of that 

 theory. Indeed, it would be difficult to understand the 

 advantage of the ambiguous word memory, had it not to 

 call attention to the hypothetic fact that the organism 

 possesses the faculty of " remembering " what once has 

 happened to it or what it once has " done," so to speak, and 

 profiting by this remembering in the next generation. The 

 zoologist Pauly indeed has stated this view of the matter 

 in very distinct and clear terms. 



As we soon shall have another occasion to deal with the 

 much -discussed problem of the "inheritance of acquired 

 characters," we at present need only say a few words 

 about the " memory-theory ' as a supposed " explanation ' 

 of heredity. Undoubtedly this theory postulates, either 

 avowedly or by half-unconscious implication, that all the 

 single processes in individual morphogenesis are the outcome 



