Jennings makes no mention of questions of the theory of heredity. He has
made some experiments on the transmission of an acquired character in
Protozoa; but it was a mutilation-character, which is, as has been often
shown, {0j} not to the point.
* * * * *
One of the most obvious criticisms of Hering’s exposition is based upon
the extended use he makes of the word “Memory”: this he had foreseen and
deprecated.
“We have a perfect right,” he says, “to extend our conception of
memory so as to make it embrace involuntary [and also unconscious]
reproductions of sensations, ideas, perceptions, and efforts; but we
find, on having done so, that we have so far enlarged her boundaries
that she proves to be an ultimate and original power, the source and,
at the same time, the unifying bond, of our whole conscious life.”
(“Unconscious Memory,” p. 68.)
This sentence, coupled with Hering’s omission to give to the concept of
memory so enlarged a new name, clear alike of the limitations and of the
stains of habitual use, may well have been the inspiration of the next
work on our list. Richard Semon is a professional zoologist and
anthropologist of such high status for his original observations and
researches in the mere technical sense, that in these countries he would
assuredly have been acclaimed as one of the Fellows of the Royal Society
who were Samuel Butler’s special aversion. The full title of his book is
“DIE MNEME als erhaltende Prinzip im Wechsel des organischen Geschehens”
(Munich, Ed. 1, 1904; Ed. 2, 1908). We may translate it “MNEME, a
Principle of Conservation in the Transformations of Organic Existence.”
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
imprints 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 possibilities of an organism may be termed, collectively,
its ‘MNEME.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account