Note 79 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
It may be asked what is meant by responding. I may repeat that I understand Professor Hering to mean that there exists in the offspring certain vibrations, which are many of them too faint to upset equilibrium and thus generate action, until they receive an accession of force from without by the running into them of vibrations of similar characteristics to their own, which last vibrations have been set up by exterior objects. On this they become strong enough to generate that corporeal earthquake which we call action.