"Professor Bain calls reproduction the acme of organic
complication." "I should prefer to say," he adds, "the acme of
organic implication; for the reason that the sperm and germ elements
are perfectly simple, having nothing in their form or structure to
show for the marvellous potentialities within them.

"I now come to the application of these considerations to the
doctrine of unconscious memory. If generation is the acme of
organic implicitness, what is its correlative in nature, what is the
acme of organic explicitness? Obviously the fine flower of
consciousness. Generation is implicit memory, consciousness is
explicit memory; generation is potential memory, consciousness is
actual memory."

I am not sure that I understand the preceding paragraph as clearly
as I should wish, but having quoted enough to perhaps induce the
reader to turn to Dr. Creighton's book, I will proceed to the
subject indicated in my title.



CHAPTER V--Statement of the Question at Issue



Of the two points referred to in the opening sentence of this book--
I mean the connection between heredity and memory, and the
reintroduction of design into organic modification--the second is
both the more important and the one which stands most in need of
support. The substantial identity between heredity and memory is