320 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



observers, and, while some of his contemporaries only saw in his writings 

 and views evidences of a profound ignorance of the facts concerning brain 

 structure and function that were then established, others went so far as 

 to accuse him of deliberate falsification. 



The great public cult of phrenology as a means of delineating character 

 by the examination of the living head was soon, of course, discredited by 

 the fact that the bones of the skull are not of consistent thickness, and that, 

 therefore, external configuration does not conform to the contour of the 

 underlying brain. Dr. Hollander is, apparently, of the opinion that Gall 

 had no personal interest in, and did not support this public craze over the 

 practical outcome of his theory ; but this is very doubtful, as there is evidence 

 that Gall examined heads and delineated character on several occasions 

 himself. Here, of course, it may have been that, carried away by public 

 adulation, he allowed his enthusiasm to overcome his powers of scientific 

 criticism ; and the judgment of the present day must be left at that. 



However, apart from the discrediting of the charlatan side of the matter, 

 the purely scientific adherents of the cerebral localisation theory began to 

 experience dif&culties of their own, for few psychologists could be induced 

 to agree as to what exactly were the faculties of the mind, and as each new 

 faculty, as it arose, had to be fitted into the scheme of localisation, while 

 others had to be abandoned, it was soon perceived that the position was 

 untenable, and so, by common consent, the cortical representation of the 

 mind on a faculty basis was abandoned. 



The consensus of modern opinion on the subject of the functions of the 

 brain is to the effect that it is to be regarded as the central controlling ganglion 

 of the nervous system, and, therefore, of the body generally, and that the 

 intellectual operations, being the latest evolutional development of the 

 mind, are correlated in some manner with the physiological activities of the 

 grey cerebral cortex, this being that structure which only shows its greatest 

 predominance in the case of the human brain. The white matter which 

 constitutes the medulla, or stalk of the hemispheres, is composed of an in- 

 numerable number of nerve-fibres, which exist to bring the cortical nerve- 

 cells into communication with each other and also with the termination 

 of the main paths of sensory communication coming from the body generally, 

 and the termination of the main paths of motor communication going out 

 to the musculature. Apart from the topographical representation of these 

 terminal connections, that of the motor paths being fairly definite but that 

 of the sensory much less so, there is little or no evidence to show any dif- 

 ferentiation of the cortical surface into separate functioning areas ; in fact, 

 the evidence which does exist tends to indicate a differentiation by layers 

 of cells rather than by surface areas. From the psychological aspect, also, 

 cortical differentiation is unlikely, as, apart from regarding the general 

 function of moral and conscious inhibition as belonging to the cortical acti- 

 vities, there is no possibility of separating off any discrete mental attributes 

 such as would be required by a strict surface differentiation of the cortex. 



Now, in his book In Search oj the Soul, Dr. Hollander espouses the cause 

 of Gall, and takes up a standpoint directly at variance with that of modern 

 opinion. He has produced a book which must have involved a tremendous 

 labour of literary research, which, indeed, bears every trace of the most 

 careful and laborious construction, and for which every credit must be given ; 

 but he thereby lays himself open to the same criticism as was given by the 

 eighteenth-century contemporaries to his master. Gall, and the reader is left 

 rather with a feeling of regret that so much energy and so much labour 

 should have been expended on the attempt to reopen a bUnd side-track, 

 when there is so much to be done in the direct line of the advance of knowledge. 

 The first volume of In Search of the Soul is an admirable piece of work, 

 and would be, as the author describes it, a valuable book of reference, but 



