356 Conclusion 



Conclusion 



As the reader who has followed us thus far has al- 

 ready noted, there are three new hypotheses or three new 

 fundamental conceptions which we submit to the judg- 

 ment of biologists and of positive philosophers in general. 

 Although they support one another mutually and all rest 

 upon the same general idea of the vital phenomenon, they 

 are, nevertheless, independent of one another, especially 

 the first two are independent of the third. 



The first is the hypothesis of centro-epigenesis to 

 which we, as was said in the preface and explained in the 

 first chapter, were led by the fundamental biogenetic law 

 of the repetition of phylogeny by ontogeny with all its 

 more or less mediate or immediate results. 



The second hypothesis is that according to which each 

 specific nervous current deposits a very definite substance 

 which, in its turn, is capable of provoking again exclu- 

 sively the same specificity of current as that by which it 

 was itself deposited. This idea has enabled us on the one 

 hand with the aid of the centro-epigenetic hypothesis to 

 explain directly the inheritance of acquired characters; 

 and has on the other hand by itself alone afforded the 

 immediate explanation of all the mnemonic phenomena in 

 the widest sense of the word, from histologic specializa- 

 tion, in consequence of which the cells answer always 

 only in the same accustomed way to the most different 

 accidental stimuli, up to the psycho-mnemonic phenom- 

 ena or phenomena of memory properly so called. 



t)ber die Bedeutung der Kernteilungsfiguren, Leipzig, Engelmann, 

 1883, P. 18, Gesamm. Abhandl. Bd. II, P. 142. - - Marcus Hartog : 

 The Dual Force of the Dividing Cell, Part I : The Achromatic Spin- 

 dle Figure illustrated by Magnetic Chains of Force, from the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Royal Society, B, Vol. 76, 1905, especially P. 555 559. 



