ENCEPHALIC SEAT OF THE PASSIONS. 309 



the brain is the organ through which the mind acts in the production 

 of the different mental and moral manifestations, can scarcely be 

 contested. 1 Yet, amongst those who admit the accuracy of this conclu- 

 sion, a difference of sentiment exists, some conceiving that other 

 organs participate in the function. To each of the known tempera- 

 ments as many intellectual and moral dispositions have been ascribed. 

 It has been affirmed, that if the brain be manifestly the organ of intel- 

 lect the passions must be referred to the organs of internal or organic 

 life; whilst others have regarded the brain as a great central apparatus 

 for the reception and elaboration of the different impressions made upon 

 the external senses; thus conceiving the latter to be direct agents in 

 the execution of the function, as well as the brain. 



The influence of the temperaments upon the mental and bodily pow- 

 ers is much less invoked at the present day than it was of old. The 

 ancients esteemed organized bodies to be an assemblage of elements, 

 endowed with different qualities, but associated and combined so as to 

 moderate and temper each other. Modern physiologists mean by tem- 

 perament, the reaction of the different organs of the body upon each 

 other consistently with health; so that if one set or apparatus of organs 

 predominates, the effect of such predominance may, it is conceived, be 

 exerted on the whole economy. In the description of the tempera- 

 ments in different authors we find a particular character of intellectual 

 and moral faculties assigned to each. The man of sanguine tempera- 

 ment is described as of ready conception, retentive memory, and lively 

 imagination; inclined to pleasure, and generally of a good disposition; 

 but inconstant and restless. He of the bilious, on the other hand, is 

 said to be hasty, violent, ambitious, and self-willed ; whilst the lym- 

 phatic temperament bestows feeble passions; cold imagination; tend- 

 ency to idleness ; and the melancholic disposes to dulness of concep- 

 tion, and to sadness and moroseness of disposition. M. Gall 2 has 

 animadverted on this assignment of any intellectual or moral faculty 

 to temperament. If we look abroad, he affirms, we find the excep- 

 tions more numerous than the rule itself; so numerous, indeed, as to 

 preclude us from establishing any law 7 on the subject. Moreover, the 

 idiot, who possesses a temperament like other persons, has no intel- 

 lectual faculties. The temperament, doubtless, influences the brain 

 within certain limits, as it does other functions : this, he suggests, it 

 probably does by impressing them with a character of energy or of 

 languor, but without, in any respect, regulating the intellectual sphere 

 of the individual. 



Bichat, 3 again, maintained, that whilst the encephalon is evidently 

 the seat of the intellectual functions, the organic nervous system, and, 

 consequently, the different organs of nutrition, which are supplied by 

 it, are the seat of emotions or passions. That distinguished physiolo- 

 gist, than whom, as M. Corvisart wrote to the First Consul, on an- 

 nouncing his death, " personne en si peu de temps n'a fait tant de 



1 Gall, Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, ii. 69, Paris, 1825 ; Adelon, art. Encephale, Diet, de 

 Medec., vii. 517 ; and Physiologic de 1'Homme, ed. cit., i. 496. 



2 Op. citat., ii. 140. 3 Sur la Vie et la Mort, Part i., Paris, 1806. 



