XXX Unconscious Memory 



des organischen Geschehens " (Munich, Ed. i, 1904 ; Ed. 

 2, 1908). We may translate it " Mneme, a Principle of 

 Conservation in the Transformations of Organic Exist- 

 ence." 



From this I quote in free translation the opening passage 

 of Chapter II : — 



" We have shown that in very many cases, whether in 

 Protist, Plant, or Animal, when an organism has passed into 

 an indifferent state after the reaction to a stimulus has ceased, 

 its irritable substance has suffered a lasting change : I call 

 this after-action of the stimulus its ' imprint ' or ' engraphic ' 

 action, since it penetrates and imprints itself in the organic 

 substance ; and I term the change so effected an ' imprint ' 

 or ' engram ' of the stimulus ; and the sum of all the im- 

 prints possessed by the organism may be called its ' store of 

 imprints," wherein we must distinguish between those which 

 it has inherited from its forbears and those which it has 

 acquired itself. Any phenomenon displayed by an organism 

 as the result either of a single imprint or of a sum of them, 

 I term a ' mnemic phenomenon ' ; and the mnemic possi- 

 bilities of an organism may be termed, collectively, its 

 ' Mneme.' 



" I have selected my own terms for the concepts that I have 

 just defined. On many grounds I refrain from making any 

 use of the good German terms ' Gedachtniss, Erinnerungs- 

 bild.' The first and chiefest ground is that for my purpose I 

 should have to employ the German words in a much wider 

 sense than what they usually convey, and thus leave the door 

 open to countless misunderstandings and idle controversies. 

 It would, indeed, even amount to an error of fact to give to 

 the wider concept the name already current in the narrower 

 sense — nay, actually limited, like ' Erinnerungsbild,' to phe- 

 nomena of consciousness. ... In Animals, during the course 

 of history, one set of organs has, so to speak, specialised itself 

 for the reception and transmission of stimuli — the Nervous 

 System. But from this specialisation we are not justified in 

 ascribing to the nervous system any monopoly of the function, 

 even when it is as highly developed as in Man. . . . Just as 

 the direct excitability of the nervous system has progressed 

 in the history of the race, so has its capacity for receiving 

 imprints ; but neither susceptibility nor retentiveness is its 

 monopoly ; and, indeed, retentiveness seems inseparable from 

 susceptibility in living matter." 



