Cope 261 
which are active simultaneously, each in its own way in 
the most different points of the soma. And just as the 
resultant of several forces acting upon one point at the 
same moment can be decomposed again into its former 
component parts, all of which would still act simulta- 
neously, so it is conceivable how this particular mode 
of being of the common form of energy which arose 
and was stored up in this way in the germ can become 
decomposed again at the proper time at all the various 
points of the new organism into the same modes of being 
as formerly, which had already been its components in 
the parent organism. 
To mitigate the fault of indefiniteness in his theory 
this investigator, just like Haeckel, Orr and many others, 
also compares the ontogeny thus produced by bathmism 
with the mnemonic phenomenon. And although he has 
thereby certainly neither removed or even diminished 
the general vagueness which characterizes his whole 
theory he succeeds nevertheless in expressing here a 
remarkable and suggestive idea. 
“We may compare the building of the embryo to 
the unfolding of a record or memory which is stored 
in the central nervous system of the parent and impressed 
in greater or less part on the germ plasm during its 
construction, in the order in which it was stored. This 
record may be supposed to be woven into the texture 
of every organic cell and to be destroyed by specializa- 
tion in modified cells in proportion as they are incapable 
of reproducing anything but themselves.” 
“In the case of the germ plasma no other specialization 
exists so that the entire record may be repeated stage 
after stage, thus producing the succession of type- 
structures which embryology has made familiar to us. 
