Comparison with Phonograph and Telephone 301 
is, in fact, if the expression be allowed, a true centro- 
epigenesis. The needle placed at the center of the 
membrane repasses through all the stages through which 
it had passed when the sentence was spoken; and each of 
these stages was only the total effect of the repercussion 
upon this point of all the extremely complex vibrations 
called forth in the membrane by external influences, in 
this case the vibrations in the air. Since the needle,—one 
single point of the dynamic system,—repeats thus the same 
identical series of specific movements which were before 
produced at this point by the concurrence and union of all 
the complex movements of the system, these successive 
specific movements of this one point are thereby again 
decomposed into all the same successive complex modes 
of the entire dynamic system, in this case constituted by 
the extremely complex vibrations of the membrane. 
Let us suppose, moreover, that it were possible to 
interpose in an ordinary telephone wire transmitting a 
series of variations of the electric current a complex ac- 
cumulator capable of receiving the current and of return- 
ing it after a certain time just as it was in its successive 
variations. Then the whole series of complex dynamic 
systems, which were formed by the successive complex 
vibrations of the membrane receiving the spoken words 
could be reproduced, just as at the receiving station, after 
any interval whatever, exactly as with the phonograph. 
Well, the role which centroepigenesis attributes to the 
germinal substance is fundamentally nothing else than 
that it forms a similar complex accumulator. 
Finally it may appropriately be noted here, that this 
comparison with the phonograph permits us to make still 
more definite and clear all that we stated at the end of 
the fourth chapter, namely that the centroepigenetic 
