FUNCTION AND ENVIRONMENT 195 



that when living matter is affected by a 

 stimulus, its quality cannot be the same as 

 it was before the stimulus. Even a bar of 

 iron is not quite the same after it has been 

 once struck ; how much more a living creature 

 which is specialized towards gaining and 

 garnering experience. There is always some 

 residual effect; this Semon calls an " en- 

 gram," and the sum of the engrams of a living 

 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 

 returning towards a position again essentially 

 Lamarckian, for thus the results of experience 

 may be conceived as accumulating from 

 generation to generation, even although, as 

 Weismann maintains, individually 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, 



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