"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 'Gedachtniss, 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