Succession of Onto genetic Mnemonic States 331 



the embryo which had been provoked by the reawaken- 

 ing of the mnemonic element immediately preceding. 



It is then in development even more than in mnemonic 

 phenomena properly so called that there operates the law 

 of rigorous succession, in which, as Ribot says, each 

 member of a series "suggests" the following. 248 



In summing up all that we have said thus far we 

 can thus affirm that if the mnemonic phenomena, prop- 

 erly so called, cannot serve to explain ontogenetic phe- 

 nomena nor the latter to explain the former, their 

 resemblance which has nevertheless been noted by so 

 great a number of authors can be explained by a third 

 phenomenon more general and more simple than either. 

 And this phenomenon consists in the faculty possessed 

 by all living substance of accumulating and giving back 

 again individually the different particular specificities of 

 generic nervous energy, which constitutes the essence of 



all vital phenomena whatever. 

 ******* 



This property of accumulating and giving back spe- 

 cific nervous energy, attributed by hypothesis to all living 

 organic substance, is thus shown to be capable of explain- 

 ing the most fundamental biological phenomena, from 

 histologic specialization of cells which respond always 

 in their customary specific manner no matter how unusual 

 may be the stimulus which excites them, to the inheritance 

 of acquired characters, from the evolution of species 

 and the repetition of phylogeny by ontogeny, direct con- 

 sequences of that inheritance, to mnemonic phenomena 

 properly so called. 



It remains for us to demonstrate that this property, 



248 Ribot : Les maladies de la memoire. P. 8. 



