THE CEREBRUM. AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 685 



the case in Nymphomania and Satyriasis in the Human subject; and it 'is 

 probably also the ordinary mode of operation of this sense, in such of the 

 lower animals as have not psychical power enough to form a conception of 

 an absent object of gratification, and cannot, therefore, be said to have 

 sexual r/r.s-//r.s'. Thus, like other sensations, it may act either intelligentially or 

 automatically; giving rise to idt'ft*, by transmission to the Cerebrum, which 

 ideas, associated with pleasurable feelings, originate desires that stimulate 

 the Reasoning powers to devise means for their gratification, and excite the 

 Will to the necessary actions; or, by its immediate action upon the motor 

 apparatus, producing respondent movements. Of this double modus operandi 

 we seem to have sufficient evidence. For among many of the lower tribes 

 of animals, at the time when the generative organs are in a state of func- 

 tional activity, the presence of an individual of the opposite sex indicated 

 by the sight, smell, hearing, or touch, immediately excites the whole train 

 of instinctive actions concerned in the reproductive operation ; whilst we 

 have no evidence in them of any voluntary exertion, resulting from the ex- 

 istence of a desire entertained in the absence of the object, and intended for 

 the gratification of that desire. In Man, on the other hand, the principal 

 operation of the sexual sensations is in awakening desires and affections, 

 which serve as excitements to the intelligence and as motives to the Will; 

 and it is only, under ordinary circumstances, when the two sexes have been 

 thus brought into close relation, that the direct reaction of the sexual sensa- 

 tion manifests itself in automatic movements. In cases, however, in which 

 this sensation is excited in unusual strength, it may completely overmaster 

 all motives to the repression of the propensity, and may even entirely re- 

 move the actions from volitional control; and a state of a very similar kind 

 exists in many Idiots, in whom the sexual propensity exerts a dominant 

 power, not because it is in itself peculiarly strong, but because the intelligence 

 being undeveloped, it acts without restraint or direction from the Will. 



5. The Cerebrum, and its Functions. 



557. We come, in the last place, to consider the functions of that portion 

 of the Nervous Centres, which is evidently, in Man, the predominant organ 

 of his whole system ; being not merely the instrument of his Reasoning facul- 

 ties, but also possessing a direct or indirect control over nearly all the actions 

 of his corporeal frame, save those purely vegetative processes which are most 

 completely isolated from his animal powers. We should be in great danger, 

 however, of coming to an erroneous conclusion as to the real character of the 

 Cerebrum and of its operations, if we confined ourselves to the study of the 

 Human organism ; and the history of Physiological science shows that every 

 advance of knowledge respecting its functions has tended to limit them, whilst 

 at the same time rendering them more precise. Thus the Brain (this term, 

 in the old Anatomy, being chiefly appropriated to the Cerebrum) was once 

 accounted not merely the centre of all motion and sensation, but also the 

 source of all vitality ; the different processes of nutrition, secretion, etc., being 

 maintained, it was supposed, by a constant supply of " animal spirits," prop- 

 agated from the brain, along the nerves, to each individual part. The 

 more modern doctrine, that the Sympathetic System has for its special func- 

 tion to supply the nervous influence requisite for the maintenance of the 

 functions of Organic life, was the first step in the process of limitation ; still 

 the Brain was regarded as the centre of all the Animal functions ; and no 

 other part was admitted to possess any power independently of it. By ex- 

 periments and pathological observations, the powers of the Spinal Cord as an 

 independent centre of action were next established ; and it was thus shown 



