xxvi Unconscious Memory 



and matter for the purpose of the organism, and to this he 

 applies the Aristotehan designation " Entelechy." The 

 question of the transmission of acquired characters is re- 

 garded as doubtful, and he does not emphasise — if he 

 accepts — the doctrine of continuous personality. His 

 early youthful impatience with descent theories and hypo- 

 theses has, however, disappeared. 



In the next work the influence of Hering and Butler is 

 definitely present and recognised. In igo6 Signor Eugenio 

 Rignano, an engineer keenly interested in all branches of 

 science, and a little later the founder of the inter- 

 national review, Rivistd di Scienza (now simply called 

 Scientia), published in French a volume entitled " Sur 

 la transmissibilite des Caracteres acquis — Hypothese d'une 

 Centro-epigenese." Into the details of the author's work 

 we will not enter fully. Suffice it to know that he accepts 

 the Hering-Butler theory, and makes a distinct advance on 

 Hering 's rather crude hypothesis of persistent vibrations 

 by suggesting that the remembering centres store slightly 

 different forms of energy, to give out energy of the same 

 kind as they have received, like electrical accumulators. 

 The last chapter, " Le Phenomene mnemonique et le 

 Phenomene vital," is frankly based on Hering. 



In " The Lesson of Evolution " (1907, posthumous, and 

 only published for private circulation) Frederick Wollaston 

 Hutton, F.R.S., late Professor of Biology and Geology, first 

 at Dunedin and after at Christchurch, New Zealand, puts 

 forward a strongly vitalistic view, and adopts Hering's 

 teaching. After stating this he adds, " The same idea 

 of heredity being due to unconscious memory was 

 advocated by Mr. Samuel Butler in his " Life and 

 Habit." 



Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Stuart Professor of Psychology 

 in Princeton University, U.S.A., called attention early in 

 the 90's to a reaction characteristic of all living beings, 

 which he terms the " Circular Reaction." We take his 



