328 The Mnemonic Phenomenon 



is reinforced. This signifies that the activation of 

 mnemonic elements or the performance of their func- 

 tion merely causes their mass and their potential energy 

 to increase. This fact, that the active participation of 

 the mnemonic centers in the biological phenomena of 

 memory leaves them unaltered in the same state as 

 before, so that they are just as capable and even more 

 capable than formerly of reproducing many more times 

 the same phenomena, reveals them to us in this relation 

 also as entirely similar in nature to the germinal sub- 

 stance, which active participation in the biologic phe- 

 nomena of ontogeny leaves likewise in the same state 

 as before and even renders always more capable of again 

 producing the phenomenon of ontogeny. 



According to the centroepigenetic hypothesis the 

 mnemonic elements of the germinal substance, with the 

 exception of the last belonging to the adult stage, can 

 become active only at each new ontogenesis ; that is their 

 reawakening would take place only after long periods 

 of repose which might last even through several years. 

 Such reawakening of mnemonic centers at long inter- 

 vals of years constitutes a very ordinary phenomenon. 

 Cases are frequent, for example, of adults who are able 

 to repeat poetry which they had learned in their earliest 

 childhood, even after many years during which they have 

 never had occasion to repeat it at any time. Coleridge 

 speaks of a young girl who, in the delirium of fever, 

 repeated long pieces in the Hebrew tongue which she 

 did not understand, but which she had heard read aloud 

 a very long time before by a priest in whose service she 

 had been. 244 A Lutheran preacher of German origin 



2 "Maudsley : The physiology of mind. P. 25. 



