278 On the Agency of Nerves. 



nerves, but that he has not been able to reconcile the phe- 

 nomena even of his own experiments with that doctrine, with- 

 out the aid of a second, and rather strained, hypothesis. 



The other fact on which I would chiefly rely, and which 

 seems to me to furnish nearly as complete an instaniia cruets 

 against Dr. Philip's notion of secretion, as his experiments did 

 against Le Gallois's notion of the heart's action, is the simple 

 fact of secretion, or the analogous function of nutrition, taking 

 place in the animal body, notwithstanding the absence of the 

 most material parts of the nervous system. 



In answer to the argument drawn from this source. Dr. Philip 

 observes, that if it proves any thing it proves too much, inas- 

 much as it would lead to the conclusion, that these parts of the 

 nervous system are not necessary to the existence of the sensorial 

 -power, that is, of the mind. Now by proving too much, I can 

 only understand, proving that to be true, which other facts 

 prove to be false, or vice versa ; and I know of no facts to prove, 

 that those faculties of the mind which have been found to exist 

 where the nervous system has been defective in its original for- 

 mation, are nevertheless necessarily connected with the very parts 

 that have been wanting in these cases ; — nor can I conceive any 

 fact, which would set aside the evidence of this short piece of 

 reasoning, that any function, which is performed in a single 

 case where a particular organ does not exist, is not, in any 

 case, dependent on (however much it may be influenced by) that 

 particular organ. In fact, on this very ground, the author of 

 the paper in the Edinburgh Review^ which Dr. Philip has quoted, 

 infers from the cases of diseased brain, which he relates, that 

 the brain is probably not at all concerned in the changes which 

 precede sensation ; and adds : " We hesitate about drawing 

 this conclusion, not from an opinion that more evidence on the 

 subject is necessary, for we conceive that one instance, such as 

 those last quoted, if it be admitted to be true, is as conclusive as 

 a thousand ; — but because we wish to see cases more minute in all 

 their details, and observed with a view specially to this physiolo- 

 gical inquiry, substituted for those which we already possess *." 



* Vol. xxiv. p. 418. 



