120 MORALS. 



I cannot but think that the evidence in favour ot 

 separate special nerve for moral purposes is exceed- 

 ingly weighty. We know that there are definite 

 masses or strata (the form which collections of nerve 

 cells take is quite unimportant it is merely a matter 

 of convenient package) of nerve cells for movement, 

 for sensation, and for the special senses. The un- 

 doubted tendency of increased knowledge of the 

 nervous system is to the localisation of nerve func- 

 tions. For example an injury, limited to one spot in 

 the brain, arrests the power of speech. Is it probable 

 that while there is one mass of cells expressly for 

 vision, another for hearing, and another for smell, that 

 the more elevated processes of intellect and morals 

 have each only a share in a common nerve mass ? Is 

 it conceivable that a mother forgives an erring child 

 or grieves over a dead one with the same ' nerve ' that 

 she 'uses for adding up her butcher's bill? If one 

 mass of nerve substance, having diverse functions, were 

 concerned in the causation of intellectual and moral 

 effects, we should naturally expect those effects to be 

 of more or less equal value in any given individual. 

 It is repeating a commonplace however to say that in 

 one individual the intellect predominates over the 

 moral sense, while in another individual the intellect 

 may be feeble and the moral faculty fairly strong. 

 This difficulty, and I venture to say most difficulties, 

 vanish if we infer that the relative amounts of separate 

 intellectual and moral nerve differ in different indi- 

 viduals ; that in fact one person has a large amount 

 of intellectual nerve and a small amount of moral 

 nerve ; in another, moral nerve is ample and intel- 

 lectual scanty. The effects of injuries and diseases of 

 the brain seem to me to furnish almost conclusive 



