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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND THE INTELLECT. 1 



By GEOEGE POUCHET. 



THE time is recent when those philosophers 

 devoted to the study of the faculties of the 

 soul refused to know anything that relates to the 

 anatomy of the body, or to the functions of the 

 organs, professing that the object of their in- 

 quiries absolutely eluded any other examination 

 than such as the mind can make by introspection. 

 To shut the eyes, to look within, to strive to see 

 how thought is born and unfolded, was for them 

 the only method of reaching the knowledge of 

 the human mind. An especially distinguished 

 advocate of this system did, however, really give 

 himself the trouble to wield the scalpel ; he made 

 dissections, visiting slaughter-houses freely, and 

 talking with the butchers of the neighborhood, 

 so that his enemies reproached him with "de- 

 lighting to see pigs killed." And this careful 

 search into the organs for a clew to the faculties 

 rewarded Descartes with very little success, and 

 was wholly abandoned after his time. Most 

 modern philosophers, excepting those of the 

 eighteenth century, have not been men of sci- 

 ence. In later years, however, they seem to have 

 admitted the impossibility of longer dispensing 

 with those definite conceptions as to the organism 

 which Descartes vainly attempted to gain, and in 

 their books they give more and more room to 

 anatomy and physiology. Unfortunately, science 

 is vast, and has long ago passed beyond the ken 

 of any one man, even were his name Aristotle. 

 Of necessity, our philosophers, like pupils, derive 

 the information of which they feel the indispen- 

 sable need, from general treatises, always behind 

 the times with regard to the real state of science, 

 which is noted down in special memoirs and the 

 records of academies. 



It is not surprising that physiologists in their 

 turn have entered on a region that philosophers 

 hesitated longer to explore without their aid. 

 They have resolutely applied their methods, and 

 their instruments too, to the investigation of the 

 intelligent spirit. But here we must be clearly 

 understood. Physiology has not to raise, it can- 

 not raise, any questions as to the nature of the 

 existence of that first cause which religion and 

 philosophy call the soul. These questions do 

 not concern it ; it systematically sets them aside, 

 having no means for deciding them. Its views 



1 Translated from the Revue des Deux Mondes. 



are far more modest : it limits its studies to those 

 manifestations which fall under our senses, and 

 become, by that very fact, the subject of legiti- 

 mate inquiry. In reality it does nothing else 

 than the spiritualist philosophy has always done ; 

 the sole difference is, that it does it by other 

 processes, in modes peculiar to itself. And, if 

 the supporters of the most contradictory philo- 

 sophic systems are left in unchecked freedom 

 to question the worth of results which, it must 

 be frankly confessed, are far from being always 

 clear and final, no one can object that biologists 

 in their turn treat this investigation as they do 

 any other, finding the best warrant for their claim 

 to authority in the partial solutions they will have 

 reason to think attained. These solutions have of 

 late acquired unexpected value and importance ; 

 discoveries fruitful in consequences have been 

 made, instruments invented, and new methods 

 employed, for the study of the faculties. Com- 

 bined anatomical and physiological inquiry into 

 the nervous system has taken an entirely new 

 aspect, highly interesting to understand, since 

 the results reached by biology touch the solution 

 of the most intricate problems the human mind 

 can propose to itself. 



Every one at this day knows that the brain is 

 the seat of the intellectual faculties. We are 

 trained in this belief, and therefore inclined to 

 suppose that it has been always held. Far from 

 this, our conception of the brain's function arose 

 at a comparatively recent time. Minds counted, 

 among the greatest the human race has known 

 were long discussing what our children nowadays 

 know before they go to school. Such is the his- 

 tory of all our knowledge : the most elementary 

 and commonplace facts once employed the vigils 

 of men of genius. The principle of life, and that 

 conglomerate of properties and functions which 

 was later styled the soul, was for a long time one 

 and the same in men's minds, with the idea of 

 the breath. Among primitive tribes, busied al- 

 ways with war and the chase, the notion pre- 

 vailed that the blood was the very life, and flowed 

 with it through the veins, quitting together with 

 it the dead warrior's body. Thus the souls 

 of Homer's heroes escape through their gaping 



