220 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



" form " is the arranger. When we see in 

 books as we sometimes do that such and such 

 a thing is a " phenomenon of arrangement," 

 a favourite expression, let us not go away con- 

 tented but reflect that when we sit down to 

 a well-appointed and prettily decorated dining- 

 table we do not indulge in platitudes about 

 " phenomena of arrangement," but congratu- 

 late our hostess on her taste and on the skill 

 of her butler or her parlour-maid. 



The Another theory to account for inheritance is 



mnemic that known as Mnemic and advanced by Hering 

 and with much greater force by Samuel Butler. 

 This teaches that it is the recollection of the 

 embryo which causes it to go through the 

 stages which its progenitors had previously 

 traversed. The memory is of course uncon- 

 scious, like much of our adult memory per- 

 haps. The same idea is the basis of Rignano ? s 

 Centro-epigenetic hypothesis. We need not 

 delay over the criticism of these theories, full 

 of interest though they are, since, for our 

 present purposes they possess one altogether 

 fatal flaw : no one can possibly remember a 

 thing which neither he nor anyone else has ever 

 done before. Ex hypothesi the single cell 

 divides and becomes first a congeries of cells; 

 then an adult form and all because it is acting 

 upon the unconscious memory of what its an- 



