I hereby conclude my presentation of the grounds upon which SWEDENBORG
appears to have founded his doctrine of the cerebral cortex as the seat
of the soul’s activity.
I. It has here been my endeavour to show, that his _first_ general
statement that the centres of the psychical functions are to be found
in the cortex was a conclusion, which he derived from three premises,
secured in different ways:
The _1st_ premise was a conclusion drawn from the clinical observations,
post mortem discoveries and results obtained from experiments on animals,
which he had collected from literature;
The _2nd_ premise was a summing up of the comparatively recent
discoveries in microscopic cerebral anatomy, and
The _3rd_ was an hypothesis, concerning the continuous connection between
the cortical elements and the fibres of the cerebral medulla, by which
an easy communication was established between those elements and the
distributions of the nerves in the various parts of the body. In his
conclusions from these premises SWEDENBORG had some guidance in preceding
authors, who placed at least the sensory function in a certain connection
with the cortical substance.
II. His second statements, his essential _doctrine of localization_,
showed in many points a great agreement with that presented by VIEUSSENS,
but also contained important differences, which partly rested upon the
conclusion to which SWEDENBORG had previously come, concerning the
importance of the cortex for the psychic life, partly depended upon the
new point of view concerning the correspondence of the cerebral regions
to those of the body, to which he had arrived in his work supported by
clinical results. The _detailed_ doctrine of localizations seems to have
been constructed with the assistance of VIEUSSENS’ detailed statements
concerning the connection of the nerves with the various regions of the
cerebral medulla.
III. His third statement, his—so to speak, ›_Cerebellular theory_›,
that the ›Cerebellula› were the units of which the brain was in reality
composed, and that the function of the cortex was essentially the summing
up of the activity of the ›Cerebellula›, and that the ›Cerebellula› were
connected with one another into various kinds of groups, corresponding to
the various kinds of perceptions and to the different movements of the
body, etc., this was grounded in part upon the discoveries of Malpighi
and others and their detailed descriptions of the structure and situation
of the cortical elements and their connection with each other, in part
upon SWEDENBORG’s clinical experiences and his own previously drawn
conclusions, which be further followed up.
The first two statements have in our time been embraced with the
liveliest interest and essentially corroborated. And as concerns the
third, the same applies in part; but how great the validity of this
statement is, it is for the future to decide.
Consequently SWEDENBORG arrived at almost the same result as that to
which our own day has attained, although in a partly different manner.
Our times have had the assistance of exact methods of investigation
and of a most highly developed technique. In SWEDENBORG’s time the
research method of microscopical anatomy and experimental physiology
were yet in their cradle; and the two branches of science, medicine and
pathology, which afterwards with the greatest interest have taken part
in the investigation of the function of the cortex, had then hardly as
yet turned their attention thither. As to how SWEDENBORG nevertheless
succeeded in winning such rich and beautiful results in this field,
and how well he employed the widely spread literature in question, I
have attempted to show in this my presentation by tracing his path
through the folios of the old authors and indicating the places where
he gathered the material for his doctrinal structure and the premises
for his conclusions. Finally, however, it should be emphasized that,
when SWEDENBORG collected his facts from the many separated fields of
literature, he found them not at all presented in the large works as
important ›chief subjects›, or even as lying plainly at hand. No, he
was often, so to say, obliged to dig out his material from a chaos of
erroneous observations, false interpretations and curious conceptions;
and afterwards he had to still further sift and elaborate it, before he
could draw his conclusions out of it.
In view of all this one must say that it was in truth a _work of genius_
to search out of such a chaos the guiding threads which were concealed
within it, and that, in spite of their imperfection in many points,
nevertheless to be able to find so much of the truth!