296 Explanation of Inheritance 



transitorily the whole dynamic condition of that stage. 

 We have here then a phenomenon of succession or of 

 association of nerve-currents which, as is easily conceiv- 

 able and becomes even clearer later, may serve as a basis 

 for the psychic law of succession or association of ideas. 



In resume, what we have designated hitherto by the 

 name of specific potential element, and what we may 

 henceforth designate by the name of elementary nervous 

 accumulator, is then nothing else, by hypothesis, than the 

 substance of a very small mass, deposited in the nucleus 

 by every specific nervous current which flows through it, 

 a substance which adds itself to the others already 

 present without changing them, and which is able as soon 

 as it finds itself again in conditions of environment like 

 those present at the moment when it was deposited, to 

 restore the same specific current by which it was 

 produced. 



This definition and the hypothesis involved answers at 

 once the question as to the mode of action which the new 

 specific potential element, acquired by the germinal sub- 

 stance of the central zone of an adult organism in 

 consequence of a new functional adaptation in this or- 

 ganism, will follow during the ontogeny of the next 

 following organism. For from all we have thus far said, 

 it results that this new specific potential element will first 

 be able to become active when the embryo shall have al- 

 ready attained the same state in which the parent 

 organism found itself immediately before it acquired this 

 same new specific potential element along with the new 

 character. 



Let us consider now what happens as a result of its 

 activation: In the parent organism there was present at 

 first a certain circulatory system S, corresponding to the 



