ABSTRACT
The most fundamental affective tendency of all, that of hunger, is in the long run nothing but the tendency to maintain or re-establish the internal nutritive environment in the qualitative and quantitative conditions which enable the stationary metabolic state to continue. The tendency of organisms to the invariability of their own stationary physiological state thus changes into a tendency to the invariability of their external or internal environments. This chapter explains the fundamental mnemic property of all living matter, a property which explains a whole series of the most important and characteristic biological phenomena proceeding from it either directly or indirectly. In confirmation of the hypothesis of the mnemic origin and nature of all the affective tendencies, there now intervenes one of their very general properties, that of transference, which is also itself essentially mnemic, and by which all other affectivities are derived from those of direct mnemic origin, and thus come to have an indirect mnemic origin.
