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, 
