290 Explanation of Inheritance 



ticular specific potential element will consequently be 

 formed and deposited, which will be added to the element 

 or elements already present. All these elements, new as 

 well as old, deposited in the somatic nuclei, will, however, 

 be lost with the death of the individual; and those alone 

 will escape this destruction which are deposited in the 

 germinal substance of the central zone. The lasting 

 variation of the functional stimulus will thus have had 

 for its total effect, in so far as the species is concerned, 

 the simple addition of a new specific potential element to 

 the germinal substance. 



Arrived at this point, we reserved for one of the 

 following chapters the examination of the manner in 

 which this new element would act in the ontogeny of the 

 next following organism. It is then with this examina- 

 tion that we must now occupy ourselves in the present 

 chapter. 



We should first dwell a little more in detail upon this 

 hypothesis, which we mentioned only in passing in con- 

 nection with the posthumous action, or "Nachwirkung," 

 of the nucleus in enucleated fragments of unicellular 

 forms. We mean the hypothesis that the substance 

 which constitutes each specific element, and which is cap- 

 able of giving as discharge a single well-determined 

 specific nerve-current, is also the same and only substance 

 which this specific nerve-current can in its turn form and 

 deposit. 



This should not appear so very strange to us, since 

 the inorganic world itself presents a phenomenon similar 

 in certain respects. The substance which actually con- 

 stitutes the charge of ordinary electric accumulators is 

 capable of giving back inversely, during its discharge, the 

 same kind of energy which it had previously received, 



