256 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



logy of past days these nerves were credited with the possession of a 

 much more intimate relation to the play of emotions. By some 

 authorities in a past decade of science, the seat of the emotions was 

 referred exclusively to the nerves in question and to the processes 

 which they regulate. Under the influence of these nerves and of the 

 emotions, argued these theorists, we see the functions of the body 

 gravely affected ; and in some " epigastric centre," as the chief nerve- 

 mass of this system was termed, the emotions were declared to reside. 

 But in such a theory of the emotions, results were simply mistaken 

 for causes. On the ground that disturbance of the heart's action, or 

 of digestion, occurred as a sign and symptom of emotion, the play of 

 feelings was assigned to the bodily organs, whither in classic ages had 

 been set the "passions" and "humours" residing in spleen, liver, 

 and elsewhere. 



But in modem science nous avons change tout cela. If we are 

 not thoroughly agreed as to the exact location of the emotions 

 in the brain itself, we at least by common consent regard the central 

 organ of the nervous system as the seat of the feelings which 

 play in divers ways upon the bodily mechanism. Most readers 

 are conversant with the fact that all brains, from those of fishes to 

 those of quadrupeds and man, are built up on one and the same 

 broad type ; exhibiting here and there, as we ascend in the scale, 

 greater developments of parts which in lower life were either but 

 feebly developed or otherwise unrepresented at all. To this plain 

 fact, we may add two others which lead towards the understanding 

 of the seat and locale of the emotions. In man and his nearest allies, 

 two of the five or six parts of which a typical brain may be said to 

 consist have become immensely developed as compared with the 

 other regions. And it is on this latter account that we familiarly 

 speak of man's brain as consisting of two chief portions the big 

 brain, or cerebrum, filling well-nigh the whole brain-case ; and the 

 little brain, or cerebellum, which lies towards the hinder part of the 

 head. To these chief parts of the brain we may add by way of 

 comprehending the emotional localities the " sensory ganglia," or, 

 as they are collectively termed, the " sensorium." In these latter 

 nerve-masses or ganglia the nerves of special sense those of sight, 

 hearing, smell, &c. terminate. Impressions of sight, for instance, 

 received by the eyes, are transferred to the appropriate ganglia in 

 which the act of mind we term " seeing " is excited. And so also 

 with hearing and the other senses ; the organ of sense being merely 

 the " gateway of knowledge," and the true consciousness in which 

 knowledge resides being thus excited within the brain. Add to these 

 primary details one fact more, namely, that the spinal cord, protected 

 within the safe encasement formed by the backbone, possesses at its 

 upper or brain end a large nervous mass known as the " medulla ob- 



