ABSTRACT
The Mnemische Empfindungen, of which Miss Bella Duffy has given us the following excellent translation, was intended by the late Dr. Richard Semon as the first of a series of applications and confirmations of the principles laid down in his Mneme. 1 His tragic death, and perhaps the war to whose outcome it was partly due, caused that programme to remain unexecuted. And, except a small volume of controversy on the “Transmissibility of Individual Modifications” and a posthumous fragment on the “Correlation of Cerebral and Mental Phenomena” (Bewusstseinsvorgang und Gehirnprozess, Wiesbaden 1920), the Mneme (translated by Mr. Louis Simon) and this present work are all that stands for what was intended as a kind of mnemic biology, or even of mnemic philosophy. So, as the two works are complete, each in itself, Semon having quoted from his earlier work whatever he deemed necessary in the later one, I have ventured to suppress in this English translation the sub-title “First Continuation of Mneme.” Moreover, I have altered the title from “Mnemic Sensations” to “Mnemic Psychology,” which seems more appropriate to its contents, and in so far more suited 12to bring it into the hands of those English readers who can profit by it most. And at the same time put it beyond the reach of certain criticisms and polemics which do not rightly apply to it, however much they may do so to the mainly biological and only incidentally psychological earlier volume, namely the Mneme.
