Succession of Outogenetic Mnemonic States 331 
the embryo which had been provoked by the reawaken- 
ing of the mnemonic element immediately preceding. 
It is then in development even more than in mnemonic 
phenomena properly so called that there operates the law 
of rigorous succession, in which, as Ribot says, each 
member of a series “suggests” the following.?#8 
In summing up all that we have said thus far we 
can thus affirm that if the mnemonic phenomena, prop- 
erly so called, cannot serve to explain ontogenetic phe- 
nomena nor the latter to explain the former, their 
resemblance which has nevertheless been noted by so 
great a number of authors can be explained by a third 
phenomenon more general and more simple than either. 
And this phenomenon consists in the faculty possessed 
by all living substance of accumulating and giving back 
again individually the different particular specificities of 
generic nervous energy, which constitutes the essence of 
all vital phenomena whatever. 
* DT * * * * * 
This property of accumulating and giving back spe- 
cific nervous energy, attributed by hypothesis to all living 
organic substance, is thus shown to be capable of explain- 
ing the most fundamental biological phenomena, from 
histologic specialization of cells which respond always 
in their customary specific manner no matter how unusual 
may be the stimulus which excites them, to the inheritance 
of acquired characters, from the evolution of species 
and the repetition of phylogeny by ontogeny, direct con- 
sequences of that inheritance, to mnemonic phenomena 
properly so called. 
It remains for us to demonstrate that this property, 
248Ribot: Les maladies de la mémoire. P. 8 
