THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND THE INTELLECT. 



273 



anatomy are not less in agreement, and in this 

 case, too, we see how very useful in the analysis 

 of mental phenomena that direction of the fibres 

 may be which Gall regarded as so important. The 

 seat of all those mental operations just enumerated, 

 which are, for the most part, intermediate be- 

 tween perceptions coming from without and the 

 reactions of our will on the outer world, must 

 necessarily be found in the mass of gray matter 

 connected on one side with the optic layers, and 

 on the other with the striated bodies ; and this is 

 exactly the case with the surface of the convolu- 

 tions which have, in fact, twofold attachments by an 

 infinite number of fibres with the perceptive cen- 

 tres (the optic layers), and with the volitional 

 centres (the striated bodies), although these, on 

 the contrary, are in no part directly' connected 

 with each other. 



Gall was not wholly wrong, therefore, in mak- 

 ing the mental capacity of individuals depend on 

 the state of the surface of the brain. No one 

 pays any attention nowadays, it is true, to that 

 fantastic geography of the surface of the skull 

 conceived by him and by his disciple Spurzheim. 

 Phrenology, so understood, is indeed a dead sci- 

 ence. Some facts, it is true, seem to indicate i 

 that such or such a portion of what is called 

 the intellect does not dwell in any one place 

 rather than another at the surface of the convo- 

 lutions, and that the entirety of the faculties may 

 remain untouched in any one part of the whole 

 of it. Metaphysics will not fail to make much of 

 this argument, which does, in fact, seem to plead 

 in favor of a kind of independence of the soul 

 upon the organ which would thus be only its in- 

 strument ; but scientific inquiry is not concerned 

 with troubling itself about the consequences that 

 must flow from its discoveries : it suffices for it if 

 the facts it establishes are exact. Now, patients 

 have been observed, after suffering wounds which 

 tore the surface of the brain and lacerated its 

 convolutions, in full possession of their faculties, 

 to all appearance, keeping their seats, talking, 

 answering questions put to them, telling their 

 mishap, while the surgeon was picking up the 

 fragments of their brain in the wound. Recov- 

 eries from such wounds, it is said, have been 

 observed. Before pronouncing on such facts 

 care must be taken to remark how difficult it 

 may be to determine whether the mental pow- 

 ers of a man thus healed do quite remain pre- 

 cisely what they were before the injury ; and, on 

 the other hand, attention has been very lately 

 drawn to a possible localization of the faculties of 

 intellect by a strange disorder, now well known to 

 90 



physicians under the name of aphasia. A man all 

 at once loses the power of expressing his thoughts 

 in words, and yet he is not struck dumb ; the vocal 

 organs are intact, for he sometimes keeps inces- 

 santly repeating one phrase, thus proving their un- 

 impaired state. These phrases have been care- 

 fully noted ; in one case it was, " There is no dan- 

 ger ; " in another, " Good heavens ! how ray hand " 

 — but it is impossible for the patient to utter an- 

 other word, though he understands the sense of 

 words spoken to him, or given him to read, and 

 his faculties seem uninjured. He knows that he 

 could once speak, and tries to speak, and all his 

 efforts end with the inevitable phrase that issues 

 from his lips whenever he attempts to answer 

 with the words he has in his head, and which he 

 knows, because he recognizes them when he hears 

 them or sees them written. There is a break in 

 the natural connection of the nervous actions. 

 Between the will that orders and the nerves that 

 ought to execute, one of those centres of mysteri- 

 ous function which transforms the volition into 

 a stimulus to motion for the muscles is evident- 

 ly suppressed, altered. Any explanation of what 

 takes place in aphasia is futile, precisely because 

 we know absolutely nothing of the nature and seat 

 of the transformations intervening between voir 

 tion and the movement willed. We note a dis- 

 turbance in the succession of nervous actions, but 

 we are ignorant what or where the lesion is. A 

 modern philosopher, relating the equally singular 

 case of an old priest, who was unable to pronounce 

 distinctly two words of sense, but who could re- 

 cite without stopping, if prompted by hearing the 

 first words, La Fontaine's fable " The Cock and 

 the Fly," or the famous exordium of Father Bri- 

 daine, speaks of " the mechanism of memory con- 

 tinuing sound at one point, which could be set at 

 work merely by stimulating that point." This 

 explanation could not satisfy physiologists, who 

 have at least the merit of frankly confessing 

 their complete ignorance on subjects of this kind. 

 Instead of seeking to explain aphasia, they have 

 fastened upon the inquiry whether they could not 

 find some fixed alteration in a determined point 

 of the gray matter to authorize them to say: 

 " Through this passes the efflux issuing from the 

 will which will be translated into motions suited 

 to produce articulated speech; in this spot one 

 of the necessary transmissions or transformations 

 fails to take place." 



If not out of place, we may here illustrate by 

 a comparison borrowed from electricity. Let us 

 suppose the two extremities of a telegraphic circuit 

 on a table before an ignorant observer ; on one 



