“It may be noted that regulation in the manner we have set forth is what, in the behaviour of higher organisms, at least, is called intelligence [the examples have been taken from Protista, Corals, and the Lowest Worms]. If the same method of regulation is found in other fields, there is no reason for refusing to compare the action to intelligence. Comparison of the regulatory processes that are shown in internal physiological changes and in regeneration to intelligence seems to be looked upon sometimes as heretical and unscientific. Yet intelligence is a name applied to processes that actually exist in the regulation of movements, and there is, a priori, no reason why similar processes should not occur in regulation in other fields. When we analyse regulation objectively there seems indeed reason to think that the processes are of the same character in behaviour as elsewhere. If the term intelligence be reserved for the subjective accompaniments of such regulation, then of course we have no direct knowledge of its existence in any of the fields of regulation outside of the self, and in the self perhaps only in behaviour. But in a purely objective consideration there seems no reason to suppose that regulation in behaviour (intelligence) is of a fundamentally different character from regulation elsewhere.” (“Method of Regulation,” p. 492.)
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.’
“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 ‘Gedächtniss, Erinnerungsbild.’ 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 phenomena 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.”
Semen here takes the instance of stimulus and imprint actions affecting the nervous system of a dog
“who has up till now never experienced aught but kindness from the Lord of Creation, and then one day that he is out alone is pelted with stones by a boy. . . . Here he is affected at once by two sets of stimuli: (1) the optic stimulus of seeing the boy stoop for stones and throw them, and (2) the skin stimulus of the pain felt when they hit him. Here both stimuli leave their imprints; and the organism is permanently changed in relation to the recurrence of the stimuli. Hitherto the sight of a human figure quickly stooping had produced no constant special reaction. Now the reaction is constant, and may remain so till death. . . . The dog tucks in its tail between its legs and takes flight, often with a howl [as of] pain.”
“Here we gain on one side a deeper insight into the imprint action of stimuli. It reposes on the lasting change in the conditions of the living matter, so that the repetition of the immediate or synchronous reaction to its first stimulus (in this case the stooping of the boy, the flying stones, and the pain on the ribs), no longer demands, as in the original state of indifference, the full stimulus a, but may be called forth by a partial or different stimulus, b (in this case the mere stooping to the ground). I term the influences by which such changed reaction are rendered possible, ‘outcome-reactions,’ and when such influences assume the form of stimuli, ‘outcome-stimuli.’”
They are termed “outcome” (“ecphoria”) stimuli, because the author regards them and would have us regard them as the outcome, manifestation, or efference of an imprint of a previous stimulus. We have noted that the imprint is equivalent to the changed “physiological state” of Jennings. Again, the capacity for gaining imprints and revealing them by outcomes favourable to the individual is the “circular reaction” of Baldwin, but Semon gives no reference to either author. [0k]