76 Unconscious Memory 



we note the fact, that after increased use, alternated with 

 times of repose, there accrues to the organ in all animal 

 economy an increased power of execution with an increased 

 power of assimilation and a gain in size. 



This gain in size consists not only in the enlargement 

 of the individual cells or fibres of which the organ is 

 composed, but in the multiplication of their number ; 

 for when cells have grown to a certain size they give rise 

 to others, which inherit more or less completely the 

 qualities of those from which they came, and therefore 

 appear to be repetitions of the same cell. This growth 

 and multiplication of cells is only a special phase of those 

 manifold functions which characterise organised matter, 

 and which consist not only in what goes on within the 

 cell substance as alterations or undulatory movement of 

 the molecular disposition, but also in that which becomes 

 visible outside the cells as change of shape, enlargement, 

 or subdivision. Reproduction of performance, therefore, 

 manifests itself to us as reproduction of the cells them- 

 selves, as may be seen most plainly in the case of plants, 

 whose chief work consists in growth, whereas with animal 

 organism other faculties greatly preponderate. 



Let us now take a brief survey of a class of facts in the 

 case of which we may most abundantly observe the power 

 of memory in organised matter. We have ample evidence 

 of the fact that characteristics of an organism may descend 

 to offspring which the organism did not inherit, but which 

 it acquired owing to the special circumstances under 

 which it lived ; and that, in consequence, every organism 

 imparts to the germ that issues from it a small heritage of 

 acquisitions which it has added during its own lifetime 

 to the gross inheritance of its race. 



When we reflect that we are dealing with the heredity 

 of acquired qualities which came to development in the 

 most diverse parts of the parent organism, it must seem 

 in a high degree mysterious how those parts can have any 

 kind of influence upon a germ which develops itself in an 



