STUDY OF BRAINS OF SIX EMINENT SCIENTISTS AND SCHOLARS. 229 



afforded by the acquisition of the faculty of speech — " the most human manifestation 

 of humanity," as Huxley termed it — and the successful localization of this faculty in 

 certain regions of the cerebrum was the first of a series which resulted in the delinea- 

 tion of a good working-map of the somesthetic * sense- and association-areas of the 

 brain. As a doctrine slowly evolved out of the primitive ideas of the phrenologist 

 Gall, cerebral localization remains firmly established and now renders surgical inter- 

 vention possible in cases heretofore considered beyond aid. In some quarters there is 

 a tendency to revert to phrenology and phrenological methods in localizing the pas- 

 sions and emotions — the moral qualities as distinguished from the intellect. It is a 

 fascinating topic and much has been thought and said upon it. In a crude way every 

 one is a phrenologist and a physiognomist, for it is common to hear it said of this or 

 that individual : " He has a brutal head ; a brutal face " ; "A noble head, a fine face " 

 — without exactly knowing why we say so. It would be a great benefit to the com- 

 munity if the subtle moral qualities could be gauged and expressed in exact terms. 

 The most recent attempt to do this was made by Dr. Bernard Hollander in his book : 

 " The Mental Functions of the Brain." His claims are very pretentious and he departs 

 but little from the old theories of phrenology throughout his argument. The work 

 contains many errors and the data are handled so loosely that one is easily prejudiced 

 against the author's views and one may rightly question the soundness of his judg- 

 ment. On the whole the work has added little to the conclusions previously arrived 

 at in clinical neurology. 



As for the correlation of cranial development with the mental and moral attributes 

 of an individual, phrenology has signally failed to afford a satisfactory means for 

 investigation. To some degree the characters of skull-form indicate relatively greater 

 development of this or that division of the brain, but always in corroboration of our 

 present-day knowledge concerning the localization of the mental functions only. Thus 

 in composei's like Bach and Beethoven the skull indicated an enormous development 

 of the posterior association areas. In the skull of the philosopher Leibnitz there was 

 a great development of the right parietal and left subfrontal regions. The same was 

 true of the skull of Immanuel Kant. 



When we come to consider cerebral localization in the light of brain-evolution, it 

 will be seen that the acquisition of such mental functions as language, abstract thought, 

 ideation and reasoning have been the chief factors in bringing about the superior 

 structure of the human brain, and, and we have just learned, any given region of the 

 cortex gains in functional dignity with the increase of its association. When we remem- 



* By somesthetic areas I meau those which are devoted to the registration of cutaneous impressions, impressions 

 from the muscles, tendons and joints ; in short, the sense of movement. 



