BIOLOGICAL WRITINGS OF SAMUEL BUTLER 33 



Richard Semon is a professional zoologist and anthropologist 

 of such high status for his original observations and researches 

 in the mere technical sense, that in these countries he would 

 assuredly have been acclaimed as one of the Fellows of the 

 Royal Society who were Samuel Butler's special aversion. 

 The full title of his book is Die Mneme als crhaltende Prinzip 

 ini Wechscl des ororanischcii Geschchcns (Munich: ist ed, 1904; 

 2nd ed. 1908). We may translate it Miicutc : a Principle of 

 Conservation in the Transformations of Organic Existence. 



From this I quote in free translation the opening passage 

 of chapter ii. : 



" We have shown that in very many cases, whether in 

 Protist, Plant, or Animal, when an organism has passed into 

 an indifferent state after the reaction to a stimulus has ceased, 

 its irritable substance has suffered a lasting change : I call this 

 after-action of the stimulus its 'imprint' or 'engraphic' action, 

 since it penetrates and imprints itself in the organic substance ; 

 and I term the change so effected an 'imprint' or 'engram' of 

 the stimulus ; and the sum of all the imprints possessed by the 

 organism may be called its ' store of imprints,' wherein we must 

 distinguish between those which it has inherited from its for- 

 bears and those which it has acquired itself. Any phenomenon 

 displayed by an organism as the result either of a single imprint 

 or of a sum of them, I term a ' mnemic phenomenon ' ; and the 

 mnemic possibilities of an organism may be termed, collectively, 

 its ' Mneme.' 



" I have selected my own terms for the concepts that I have 

 just defined. On many grounds I refrain from making any use 

 of the good German terms ' Gedachtniss, Erinnerungsbild.' The 

 first and chiefest ground is that for my purpose I should have 

 to employ the German words in a much wider sense than what 

 they usually convey, and thus leave the door open to countless 

 misunderstandings and idle controversies. It would, indeed, 

 even amount to an error of fact to give to the wider concept 

 the name already current in the narrower sense — nay, actually 

 limited, like ' Erinnerungsbild,' to phenomena of consciousness. 

 ... In Animals, during the course of history, one set of organs, 

 so to speak, specialised itself for the reception and transmission 

 of stimuli — the Nervous System. But from this specialisation 

 we are not justified in ascribing to the nervous system any 

 monopoly of the function, even when it is as highly developed 

 as in Man. . . . Just as the direct excitability of the nervous 

 system has progressed in the history of the race, so has its 

 capacity for receiving imprints ; but neither susceptibility nor 

 retentiveness is'its monopoly ; and, indeed, retentiveness seems 

 inseparable from susceptibility in living matter." 



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