FUNCTION AND ENVIRONMENT 195 



garnering experience. There is always some 

 residual effect; this Semon calls an 'en- 

 gram," and the sum of the engrams of a liv- 

 ing creature is its ;< Mneme' -its organic 

 lore, its bodily and sub-conscious memory 

 we may practically say. 



The ;< Mneme' may have particular im- 

 portance in cases where penetrating stimuli, 

 like those of the seasons, recur periodically, 

 re-vivifying and re-enforcing the previous 

 accumulations of experience. Along this line 

 of thought, Semon, and following him Francis 

 Darwin and others, may be said to be re- 

 turning towards a position again essentially 

 Lamarckian, for thus the results of experi- 

 ence may be conceived as accumulating 

 from generation to generation, even al- 

 though, as Weismann maintains, individu- 

 ally acquired bodily modifications may not 

 be entailed as such. The effects of an often 

 repeated stimulus may saturate through the 

 organism by nerve paths and protoplasmic 

 bridges and the fluent blood; what then 

 precludes them, in some cases at least, from 

 reaching even the germ-cells in their recesses? 



In this connection, it is only just to recall 

 the remarkable speculative insight of the 

 late Samuel Butler, that most convinced and 

 argumentative of Lamarckians, who, more or 

 less simultaneously with Hering in Prague, 



