Affective Tendencies 375 



monic property of all living substance which has re- 

 cently been especially emphasized by Hering, Semon 

 and Francis Darwin, and also to explain the most essen- 

 tial and significant biological phenomena proceeding 

 from it either directly or indirectly. 15 



By this extension of the mnemonic faculty to all 

 elementary physiological phenomena we now obtain a 

 somatic or visceral theory of the fundamental affective 

 tendencies in the sense that the tendency toward physio- 

 logical invariability or toward the restoration of this or 

 that previous physiological state corresponding to this 

 or that previous environment, depends on innumerable 

 elementary specific accumulations, differing from point 

 to point of the body and whose combined potential 

 energy would form as it were a "force of gravitation" 

 toward that environment or those conditions which make 

 possible the preservation or restoration of the combined 

 physiological system represented by all these elementary 

 accumulations. 



Naturally in organisms supplied with nervous sys- 

 tems there would arise and be gradually developed side 

 by side, in cooperation with, and often as a substitute 

 for, every one of these affective tendencies of purely 

 somatic origin and seat, the affective tendency repre- 

 sented by the corresponding mnemonic accumulations 

 which had been deposited in that particular zone of the 

 nervous system directly connected with the respective 

 points of the body. In man, for instance, this zone 



15 See above the chapter on "The Phenomena of Memory and 

 the Vital Phenomena." See also "Die Zentroepigenese und die 

 nervose Natur der Lebenserscheinung," Zeitschr. f. d. Ausbau d. 

 Entwicklungs-lehre, II, 1909, Heft 8-9 "Das biologische Gedachtnis 

 in der Energetik," Annalen der Natur philosophic, VIII, and Scientia, 

 XI, 3, 1909. 



