THE SEATS OF THE SOUL IN HISTORY 149 



the chief soul. I wonder at what I read in the scholastic 

 theologians and the lay philosophers concerning the three 

 ventricles with which they say the brain is supplied." 



The particular views Vesalius could not accept were that 

 the most anterior cavity in the brain was for sensations, the 

 middle one for imagination and the posterior for memory ; 

 notions that had originated with the Arabian doctors and had 

 been adopted by such scholars as Duns Scotus and Thomas 

 Aquinas. 



The next attempt to localise the soul and one that attained 

 to a notoriety commensurate with its ingenuity was that by 

 the Frenchman Rene Descartes. The great philosopher of 

 Touraine placed the soul in the pineal gland. There was a 

 show of reason for his choice of this local habitation; the soul, 

 according to all current conception, had to be one and indi- 

 visible and not extended in space. No region of the body 

 seemed so suitable for the seat of such an essence as the 

 single, simple, not bilaterally developed pineal gland — the 

 nearest approach to a single point which could be discovered 

 in the central nervous system. Here, after the manner of a 

 general governor or overseer, sat the soul, said Descartes , 

 thither came information from all the senses to it, thence it 

 issued its commands to all parts. 



There was a dark side to Descartes' speculations, for his 

 followers, denying the existence of a rational soul in the lower 

 animals, taught that the members of the brute creation were 

 unconscious automata. The practical outcome of this philo- 

 sophical absurdity was that certain Cartesians treated the 

 lower animals with positive cruelty. Very unfortunately for 

 Descartes, when the pineal body came to be examined under 

 the microscope, it was found to consist only of some atrophied 

 cells and a few crystals of carbonate of lime and other earthly 

 matter — a most unlikely dwelling-place for the soul, for " dust 

 thou art, to dust returnest," was not spoken of the soul. 

 Philosophy had to try again. We must next notice the views 

 on this subject of a great Englishman— Thomas Willis, M.D., 

 in his early life a pupil of Harvey. Though Willis wrote 

 extensively on the nervous system, his views are not nearly 

 so well known to the general reader as those of Descartes. 

 Whereas according to Descartes the soul was as nearly as 

 possible an indivisible point which could exist only in an 



