314 Explanation of Inheritance 



is therefore easy to imagine, above all if we recollect 

 that the central zone would be just one part, the least 

 differentiated part of this system, that for each one of 

 these complex modes of being of the nervous configura- 

 tion constituting a given instinct there must correspond 

 in the central zone itself its respective specific potential 

 element, and this latter becoming active later in the next 

 following ontogeny as soon as the general nervous con- 

 figuration again becomes like that which was present at 

 the moment immediately preceding that in which this 

 element was formed in the parent, must be capable of 

 so modifying this configuration as to make it acquire 

 the same instinct which the nervous configuration of 

 the parent had acquired by the action of external 

 influences. 



If now we draw a conclusion from all that we have 

 said thus far, we can very well assert that the attempt 

 to account by means of the centroepigenetic hypothesis, 

 for the Lamarckian principle in all its manifold and 

 comprehensive manifestations has not failed. One notes 

 also that this hypothesis can be assigned to the class of 

 mnemonic theories of heredity, but with this important 

 difference, that the theories of Haeckel, Hertwig, Orr, 

 Cope, and other similar ones, in order to explain the 

 phenomenon of the inheritance of acquired characters 

 appearing during development, have recourse to a phe- 

 nomenon still more special and more complex, the 

 mnemonic, and therefore do not and cannot constitute 

 any real explanation. Centroepigenesis on the contrary, 

 as we saw utilizes as subordinate hypothesis a very 

 general and very simple biological phenomenon, which 

 in many respects indeed is like certain phenomena of 

 the accumulation of energy in the inorganic world, and 



