328 The Mnemomc Phenomenon 
is reinforced. This signifies that the activation of 
mnemonic elements or the performance of their func- 
tion merely causes their mass and their potential energy 
to increase. This fact, that the active participation of 
the mnemonic centers in the biological phenomena of 
memory leaves them unaltered in the same state as 
before, so that they are just as capable and even more 
capable than formerly of reproducing many more times 
the same phenomena, reveals them to us in this relation 
also as entirely similar in nature to the germinal sub- 
stance, which active participation in the biologic phe- 
nomena of ontogeny leaves likewise in the same state 
as before and even renders always more capable of again 
producing the phenomenon of ontogeny. 
According to the centroepigenetic hypothesis the 
mnemonic elements of the germinal substance, with the 
exception of the last belonging to the adult stage, can 
become active only at each new ontogenesis; that is their 
reawakening would take place only after long periods 
of repose which might last even through several years. 
Such reawakening of mnemonic centers at long inter- 
vals of years constitutes a very ordinary phenomenon. 
Cases are frequent, for example, of adults who are able 
to repeat poetry which they had learned in their earliest 
childhood, even after many years during which they have 
never had occasion to repeat it at any time. Coleridge 
speaks of a young girl who, in the delirium of fever, 
repeated long pieces in the Hebrew tongue which she 
did not understand, but which she had heard read aloud 
a very long time before by a priest in whose service she 
had been.24#4 A Lutheran preacher of German origin 
*“4Maudsley: The physiology of mind. P. 25. 
