inclination, but something beyond; which is what is called sentiment or
feeling.”—Ibid.
[158] “The intellectual faculties are also double: some of them know;
others reflect.”—Essai Philosophique, &c. p. 225.
[159] “The faculties peculiar to man are happy in themselves, per
se.”—Ibid. p. 167.
[160] Anat. et Phys. du Syst. Nerv. &c. t. iii. p. 27.
[161] See his Histoire des Phlegmas. Chron. 1808.
[162] See his work entitled, “De l’Irritation et de la Folie,” 1828.
[163] Cours de Phrénologie, 1 vol. 8vo. 1836.
[164] Cours de Phrénologie, p. 82.
[165] Ibid. p. 140.
[166] Ibid. p. 37.
[167] “Memory is not an isolated faculty; and there are as many memories
as organs.”—p. 131.
[168] “The instincts and the sentiments have a memory as well as the
external perceptions.”—p. 36.
[169] “ ... The study of the human mind, not indeed that of a fictitious
one bearing this mysterious appellation, but of the _ensemble_ of the
mental faculties of man.”—p. 82.
[170] Page 48.
[171] “The favorers of the intra-cranial entity.”—p. 153.
[172] “Their central intra-cranial being, to which they attribute all
their faculties.”
[173] “Suppose they had called this being _person par excellence_....”—p.
75.
[174] Let us examine, as to this particular (_moi_) ME, all Broussais’s
_variorums_. In one place the _me_ comes from only one organ—the organ
of general comparison: “We owe to the organ of general comparison the
distinction of our person expressed by the sign _me_.”—Cours de Phrén.,
p. 684. Further on it comes from two—the organ of comparison and the
organ of causality: “The organ of causality is as necessary to the
distinction of the _me_, and of the _person_, as the organ of general
comparison.”—Ibid. p. 685. Next there is no organ at all: “To assign to
the _me_ a special organ appears to me to be out of the question.”—Ibid.
p. 119. And then it comes from every where: “There is no special and
central organ, and our perception of ourselves has for its basis the
sensitive perceptions.”—Ibid. p. 119.
[175] Cours de Phrénologie, p. 684.
[176] Examen de la Doctrine Médicale, etc. 1816.
[177] Cours de Phrénologie, p. 717.
[178] Cours de Phrénologie, p. 77. He also says, “Their central
intra-cranial being, to which they attribute all the faculties of a
man, is not cognisable by any of our senses, ... it is therefore a pure
hypothesis.”—Ibid. p. 153. Thus there is no _mind_ (pure hypothesis);
no _faculties_ but those of the _organs_ (the faculties are the acts
of _material organs_); no understanding, except as a simple phenomenon
of the nervous action (understanding and all its manifestations are
_phenomena of nervous action_); consequently, there is no psycology;
there is nothing but physiology; and even (for it should be clearly
understood) nothing but Broussais’s physiology.
[179] “In order to form for one’s self a just notion of the operations
which result in the production of thought, it is necessary to conceive
of the brain as a peculiar organ, specially designed for the production
thereof, just as the stomach is designed to effect digestion, the liver
to form the bile, &c.”—Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du moral de
l’homme, IIe mémoire, § vii.
[180] Whence he concludes still more admirably, to the immortality of
the soul. “I cannot,” says he, “conceive otherwise of those who die,
than that they pass into a more pleasing and tranquil life than ours,
even carrying with them the remembrance of the past: for I find there
is within us an intellectual memory.... And although religion teaches
us many things upon this subject, I must, notwithstanding, confess my
infirmity on this point, which it appears to me that I possess in common
with most people, which is, that although we might wish to believe, and
even might suppose ourselves to be firm believers in the doctrines of
religion, we are not so deeply touched with those things that are taught
by faith alone, and which our mere reason cannot attain, as by those that
are instilled into us by natural and very evident reasons.”—T. viii. p.
684.
[181] De l’Imitation et de la Folie, p. 4.
[182] “The exaggeration of the phenomena of contractility is what
constitutes irritation.”—Ibid. p. 77.
[183] Anat. et Physiol. du Système Nerveux, &c. iii. 15.
[184] The white matter is every where fibrous. No person has contributed
more than Gall to the demonstration of this great fact. He justly
remarks: “Those authors who, with Sœmmerring and Cuvier, &c., recognise
the fibrous structure of the brain, in many of its parts, have
nevertheless, not yet ventured to say that it is so in all its parts.”—T.
i. 235.
[185] The cerebellum serves only for the motions of locomotion. (See the
first article of this work.) But, I am here setting forth Gall’s opinions.
[186] “The particular systems of the brain terminate in fibrous
expansions arranged in layers, just as the other nervous systems expand
in fibres at their peripheral extremity.”—T. i. 318. “All the diverging
bundles of the brain, after they come out from the last apparatus of
reinforcement, expand in layers and form convolutions.”—T. i. 283. “The
nerves of sensation and motion expand in the skin and the muscles; the
nerves of the senses, each in the external instrument to which they
belong: for example, the pituitary membrane upon the bones of the nose:
the nerve of taste in the tongue, and the expansion of the optic nerve
in the retina.... Nature obeys precisely the same law in the brain. The
different parts of the brain originate and are reinforced at different
points; they form fibrous bundles of various sizes, which terminate in
expansions. All these expansions of the various bundles constitute, when
reunited, the hemispheres of the brain.”—T. iii. p. 3.
I here speak only of the _diverging fibres_. Coming from the interior,
they proceed towards the exterior: the _converging fibres_ coming from
the exterior, that is, according to Gall, from the gray matter that
envelopes the brain and the cerebellum, are directed inwards. The
former constitute the _convolutions_, while the latter compose the
_commissures_. But I shall, further on, return to this subject.
[187] See my work, De l’instinct et de l’intelligence des animaux, &c. p.
46, 2d edit.
[188] Opus citat. p. 49.
[189] T. iii. p. 64.
[190] T. iii. p. 64.
[191] T. iii. p. 64.
[192] T. iii. p. 58.
[193] T. iii. p. 59.
[194] T. i. p. 3.
[195] T. i. p. 18.
[196] T. i. p. 64 & 67.
[197] De la Rech. de la Verité, liv. ii. chap. ii.
[198] Ibid.
[199] Ibid.
[200] Du bel esprit, p. 80.
[201] Ibid.
[202] Cours de Phrén. 218.
[203] P. 221.
[204] See M. Leuret: Anat. Comp. du Syst. Nerv. &c. 1839.
[205] Cours de Phrén. p. 350.
[206] Ibid. p. 117.
[207] De l’Irritation et de la Folie, p. 2.
[208] Ibid. p. 76.
[209] Steno had already said, “If the medullary substance be every where
fibrous, as in fact, in most parts it appears to be, you must confess
that the disposal of these fibres must be arranged with great skill,
since the whole diversity of our feelings and motions depend upon them.
We wonder at the artifice of the fibres in each muscle, but how much more
are they worthy of admiration in the brain, where these fibres, enclosed
within so small a space, perform each its own function without confusion
and without disorder.”—_Discours sur l’anat. du cerveau_, 1668.
[210] Long before his time the same had been seen by Mistichelli,
Pourfour du Petit, Winslow, and several others, but it had been
forgotten. “Each pyramidal body,” says Pourfour du Petit, “is divided at
its inferior part into two large bundles of fibres, most frequently into
three, and in some instances into four. Those of the right pass to the
left side, and those of the left pass to the right side, mingling with
each other.”—_Lettre d’un médecin des hôpitaux du Roi._ Namur 1710.