FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIV. 



seat of the intellectual faculties.* Further, by nearly 

 universal consent, the brain is held to be also the 

 seat of the passions and moral feelings of our na- 

 ture, as well as of consciousness and every other 

 mental act, and to be the chief source of that ner- 

 vous influence which is indispensable to the vitality 

 and action of every organ of the body. There are 

 so few exceptions to the general belief of these prop- 

 ositions, that I consider myself fairly entitled to 

 hold them as established. 



Many animals possess individual senses or instincts 

 in greater perfection than man, but there is not one 

 which can be compared with him in the number and 

 range of its faculties ; and, as a necessary conse- 

 quence, there is not one which approaches him in 

 the development and perfection of its nervous sys- 

 tem. No organ can execute more than a single 

 function ; and, accordingly, even the Edinburgh Re- 

 view admits, that, in precise proportion as we as- 

 cend in the scale of creation, and the animal ac- 

 quires a sense, a power, or an instinct, do its nerves 

 multiply and "its brain improve in structure and 

 augment in volume, each addition being marked by 

 some addition or amplification of the powers of the ani- 

 mal, until in man we behold it possessing some parts of 

 which animals are destitute, and wanting none which 

 they possess" so that "'we are enabled to associate 

 every faculty which gives superiority, with some addition 

 to the nervous mass, even from the smallest indications 

 of sensation and will, up to the highest degree of sensi- , 

 bility, judgment, and expression"^ 



It is extremely important to bear in mind this con- 



* In speaking of the cerebral lobes being the place " where 

 all the sensations take a distinct form and leave durable impres- 

 sions," Cuvier adds, " L'anatomie compares en offre une autre 

 confirmation dans la proportion constante du volume de ces lobes avec 

 led^ri d j intelligence des Animaux" Vide Report to the Institute 

 on Flonrens's Experiments in 1822. 



t Edinburgh Review, No. xciv. p. 442-3. 



