CHAPTER VIII 
THE PHENOMENON OF MEMORY AND THE VITAL 
PHENOMENON 
The comparison between the phenomena of develop- 
ment and the phenomena of memory especially after the 
discovery of the fundamental biogenetic law, that onto- 
geny is a recapitulation of phylogeny, has presented 
itself spontaneously to a large number of authors. 
“The germ,” said Claude Bernard, “seems to preserve 
the memory of the organism from which it came.’’?%° 
Haeckel attributes development to the mnemonic quality 
of his plastidules. We have seen in the sixth chapter 
how Orr endeavored to explain the recapitulation of 
phylogeny during ontogeny by the mnemonic law of 
habit; how Cope held that ontogeny is called forth by 
the unconscious memory of phylogeny; how Nageli and 
in some places, Hertwig himself, attributes to the idio- 
plasm the faculty of remembering, so to speak, the suc- 
cessive stages through which it had gradually passed. 
But by far the boldest contender for the acceptance 
of the essential likeness of the ontogenetic and mnemonic 
phenomena has been Hering: ‘What else is this re- 
appearance in the developing daughter organism of 
characters of the parent organism, than a reproduction, 
7°Claude Bernard: Lecons sur les phénoménes de la vie com- 
muns aux animaux et aux végétaux. P. 66. 
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