of Germinal Continuity 27 



germ-plasm from the body-plasm is still open 

 to question; and apart from this isolation 

 the Lamarckian position remains tenable. 

 In fact Romanes, who has criticised Weis- 

 mann at length with much acumen, represents 

 him not as attempting to prove but as simply 

 ''postulating'' the absolute non-inheritance 

 of acquired characters and deducing the 

 absolute continuity of the germ-plasm in 

 his sense from this. 



A brief examination of Weismann's main 

 position and a word or two on an important 

 supplementation, to which he was eventually 

 driven, may I trust suffice to bring us round 

 again to the theory of " organic memories " 

 or "engrams^" to which our preliminary 



1 This theory was first definitely broached by Professor Ewald 

 Hering in a lecture, Concerning Memory as a general function 

 of Organized Matter, delivered at Vienna in 1870. It has 

 recently been revived and developed by Professor R. Semon of 

 Munich (to whom the word ' engram ' is due), in Die Mneme ah 

 erhaltendes Prinzip im Wechsel des organischen Geschehens, 

 2te Auf. 1908. 



