postulates a quality ("psychoid") in all living beings, directing
energy and matter for the purpose of the organism, and to this he
applies the Aristotelian designation "Entelechy." The question of
the transmission of acquired characters is regarded as doubtful, and
he does not emphasise--if he accepts--the doctrine of continuous
personality. His early youthful impatience with descent theories and
hypotheses has, however, disappeared.

In the next work the influence of Hering and Butler is definitely
present and recognised. In 1906 Signor Eugenio Rignano, an engineer
keenly interested in all branches of science, and a little later the
founder of the international review, Rivista di Scienza (now simply
called Scientia), published in French a volume entitled "Sur la
transmissibilite des Caracteres acquis--Hypothese d'un Centro-
epigenese." Into the details of the author's work we will not enter
fully. Suffice it to know that he accepts the Hering-Butler theory,
and makes a distinct advance on Hering's rather crude hypothesis of
persistent vibrations by suggesting that the remembering centres
store slightly different forms of energy, to give out energy of the
same kind as they have received, like electrical accumulators. The
last chapter, "Le Phenomene mnemonique et le Phenomene vital," is
frankly based on Hering.

In "The Lesson of Evolution" (1907, posthumous, and only published
for private circulation) Frederick Wollaston Hutton, F.R.S., late
Professor of Biology and Geology, first at Dunedin and after at
Christchurch, New Zealand, puts forward a strongly vitalistic view,
and adopts Hering's teaching. After stating this he adds, "The same
idea of heredity being due to unconscious memory was advocated by Mr.
Samuel Butler in his "Life and Habit."