THE SEATS OF THE SOUL IN HISTORY 147 



inflammation of the brain. Hence the word " phrenology," a 

 term for that pseudo-science which purports to be a discourse 

 on the localisation of things mental, is actually derived from 

 a word which refers to the diaphragm, and neither to the brain 

 nor the head at all. It is not difficult to see how the notion 

 arose that the soul was resident in the diaphragm, since strong 

 emotions — affections of the soul — strongly affect that great 

 muscle so important in breathing. Emotions made the chest 

 to heave visibly, therefore emotions arose or existed locally in 

 the chest and in its chief muscle, the diaphragm, so the ancients 

 argued. 



That viscera are related to mental and emotional states is 

 a very old observation, as for instance in the Bible when we 

 read in the Psalms, " My reins instruct me in the night seasons." 



From time immemorial has not the spleen been thought to 

 be the seat of anger and envy? We even yet talk of a 

 " splenetic" man and of a " fit of spleen " as meaning an angry 

 man and a fit of anger. While Shakespeare undoubtedly 

 accepted these notions on the visceral distribution of the 

 emotions, placing love, for instance, in the liver, he had at 

 the same time undoubtedly heard of the soul as seated in the 

 brain, for he wrote in King John (Act V. Sc. 7) : 



It is too late : the life of all his blood 

 Is touched corruptibly, and his pure brain 

 (Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-place) 

 Doth, by the idle comments that it makes, 

 Foretell the ending of mortality. 



The early Belgian chemist van Helmont (1 577-1644) was 

 probably one of the last men of science to regard the soul 

 as existing outside of the head : he placed it in the pylorus 

 of the stomach. His reasons for this are very quaint reading : 

 " Though it carries out sensations and movements by means 

 of the brain and nerves, its actual throne is in the pylorus ; 

 it resides in the orifice of the stomach." In proof of this van 

 Helmont says that a great emotion is always felt at the " pit 

 of the stomach," and that " a man may have his head blown off 

 by a cannon-ball and his heart continue to beat for some time, 

 whereas a severe blow over the pit of the stomach will stop 

 his heart and take away his consciousness simultaneously." 

 But he qualifies this in the following subtle manner : "Though 



