8 Introduction 
conception and elaboration up till then was considered 
quite independently of the question of the possibility or 
impossibility of the inheritance of acquired characters, 
but which supported by an elementary hypothetical 
phenomenon, which in certain respects finds its counter- 
part in the inorganic world, becomes recognizable at once 
as a most complete explanation of this inheritance. 
Finally in the last chapter we endeavor to show how 
this elementary hypothetical phenomenon on which the 
new biogenetic theory rests, explains also a fundamental, 
psychic phenomenon, to wit, memory and indeed the most 
characteristic properties of the vital phenomenon in gen- 
eral. And so this elementary hypothetical phenomenon 
seems to us capable of bringing together within it and 
referring to one basis not only the whole group of genetic 
phenomena, but all vital phenomena whatever in the very 
widest sense of the word. 
Since, for the reasons above stated, the inheritance of 
acquired characters is a question affecting positive philos- 
ophy in the Comtian sense or scientific philosophy, the 
author ventures to hope that biologists and naturalists 
may not regard him as an unbidden intruder into their 
domain, but rather since he is the first to recognize the 
many gaps and shortcomings of his work, he ventures to 
hope that he may count upon especial consideration, be- 
cause of the great difficulties with which he who is no 
specialist has had to contend in studies of so difficult a 
nature. 
Milan, May, 1905. E.R. 
