296 Explanation of Inheritance 
transitorily the whole dynamic condition of that stage. 
We have here then a phenomenon of succession or of 
association of nerve-currents which, as is easily conceiv- 
able and becomes even clearer later, may serve as a basis 
for the psychic law of succession or association of ideas. 
In résumé, what we have designated hitherto by the 
name of specific potential element, and what we may 
henceforth designate by the name of elementary nervous 
accumulator, is then nothing else, by hypothesis, than the 
substance of a very small mass, deposited in the nucleus 
by every specific nervous current which flows through it, 
—a substance which adds itself to the others already 
present without changing them, and which is able as soon 
as it finds itself again in conditions of environment like 
those present at the moment when it was deposited, to 
restore the same specific current by which it was 
produced. 
This definition and the hypothesis involved answers at 
once the question as to the mode of action which the new 
specific potential element, acquired by the germinal sub- 
stance of the central zone of an adult organism in 
consequence of a new functional adaptation in this or- 
ganism, will follow during the ontogeny of the next 
following organism. For from all we have thus far said, 
it results that this new specific potential element will first 
be able to become active when the embryo shall have al- 
ready attained the same state in which the parent 
organism found itself immediately before it acquired this 
same new specific potential element along with the new 
character. 
Let us consider now what happens as a result of its 
activation: In the parent organism there was present at 
first a certain circulatory system S, corresponding to the 
