492 PRIMARY FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 





which are concomitants of the movements of the ani- 

 mals, acting through long periods of time. 1 



The term mnemogenesis is employed by Professor 

 Hyatt 2 to characterize the manner in which kinetogen- 

 esis is supposed to produce results in inheritance. I 

 have suggested that the phenomena of recapitulation, 

 characteristic of ontogeny {American Naturalist, Dec, 

 1889), are due to the presence of a record in the germ 

 cells, having a molecular basis similar to that of mem- 

 ory. This view is adopted by Professor Hyatt. I have 

 already referred to it in the preceding pages. 



A general statement of this doctrine was made by 

 Mr. Sedgwick in The British and Foreign Medico-Chir- 

 urgical Review for July 1863 in the following language : 

 "For atavism in disease appears to be but an instance 

 of memory in reproduction, as imitation is expressed 

 in direct descent ; and in the same way that memory 

 never, as it were, dies out, but in some state always 

 exists, so the previous existence of some peculiarity in 

 organization may likewise be regarded as never abso- 

 lutely lost in succeeding generations, except by ex- 

 tinction of race." The next formulation of mnemo- 

 genesis is by Hering in 1870. 3 



It is concentrated in the following paragraph : 



"The appearance of properties of the parental or- 

 ganism in the full-grown filial organism can be noth- 

 ing else but the reproduction of such processes of 

 organized matter as the germ when still in the germi- 

 nal vesicles had taken part in ; the filial organism re- 

 members, so to speak, those processes, and as soon as 



1" Mechanical Origin of the Hard Parts of the Mammalia," Amer. Journal 

 0/ Morphology, 1889. Origin of the Fittest, 1887, pp. 305-373. 



2 Proceeds. Boston Soc. Nat. History, 1893, p. 73. 



3 Address before the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna, May 30, 

 1870, by Ewald Hering; English translation, Chicago, 1895. 



