Wilder, Neural Terms. 339 



the forty-five hundred recommended by the Anatomische 

 Gesellschaft, may well consider : 



First, the improbability that any competent American 

 anatomist could have been diverted from his regular duties long 

 enough to accomplish what was so effectively done by the sec- 

 retary of the Anatomische Gesellschaft. 



Secondly, the enormous advantage afforded by the complete 

 list adopted by the Gesellschaft. Many dead or dying terms 

 have been disposed of, and the "decks have been cleared" for 

 more efficient action. 



TJiirdly, whatever precipitation, vacillation, and error may 

 be condoned in individuals whom volition or circumstances may 

 lead to assume untenable positions, organizations legislating in 

 the interest of posterity should advance so slowly as to risk 

 neither recession nor even deflection. The Germans themselves 

 regard their comprehensive list, as a whole, as provisional. 

 The American selections (§^80, 238) constitute, we may be- 

 lieve, an immortal forty. 



§281. Were neural terms to be now devised de novo, the 

 hippocamp would certainly receive some less fantastic designa- 

 tion, and the great cerebral commissure would be much more 

 likely to be called trabs (a beam) than corpus callosum. But both 

 callosian and hippocampus are embalmed, as it were, in several 

 other names and they are not sufficiently objectionable to war- 

 rant their revolutionary annihilation. The best we can do is to 

 effect a tolerable compromise between the imperfect conditions 

 that we have inherited and the ideal conditions that we should 

 like to transmit to our successors. 



The anatomists of to-day have an opportunity of providing 

 for the future while cherishing the past ; of benefiting poster- 

 ity without neglecting ancestors ; of lightening the burdens of 

 generations to come, while recognizing the value of what was 

 done by the anatomical fathers : of erecting a terminologic 

 monument in which the best of what has been is cemented by 

 their own labors. 



