THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 461 



the theory may not be established as true, it may be useful by bringing 

 into view the real nature and application of such principles. 



It is, therefore, according to our views, unphilosophical to derive 

 despair, instead of hope, from the imperfect success of Buffon and his 

 predecessors. Yet this is what is done by the writer to whom we 

 refer. " For me," says he, :6 " I vow that, after having long meditated 

 on the system of Buffon, a system so remarkable, so ingenious, so 

 well matured, so wonderfully connected in all its parts, at first sight so 

 probable ; I confess that, after this long study, and the researches 

 which it requires, I have conceived in consequence, a distrust of my- 

 self, a skepticism, a disdain of hypothetical systems, a decided predilec- 

 tion and exclusive taste for pure and rational observation, in short, a 

 disheartening, which I had never felt before." 



The best remedy of such feelings is to be found in the history of 

 science. Kepler, when he had been driven to reject the solid epicycles 

 of the ancients, or a person who had admired Kepler as M. Bourdon 

 admires Buffon, but who saw that his magnetic virtue was n untena- 

 ble fiction, might, in the same manner, have thrown up all hope of a 

 sound theory of the causes of the celestial motions. But astronomers 

 were too wise and too fortunate to yield to such despondency. The 

 predecessors of Newton substituted a solid science of Mechanics for the 

 vague notions of Kepler ; and the time soon came when Newton him- 

 self reduced the motions of the heavens to a Law as distinctly con- 

 ceived as the Motions had been before. 



CHAPTER V. 



EXAMINATION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, AND CONSEQUENT 



SPECULATIONS. 



Sect. 1. The Examination of the Nervous System, 



iT is hardly necessary to illustrate by further examples the manner 

 in which anatomical observation has produced conjectural and 

 Hypothetical attempts to connect structure and action with some 



15 Bourdon, p. 274. 



