310 MENTAL FACULTIES. 



choses et aussi bien," 1 rests his views upon the following considerations : 

 1st. That while inward feeling induces us to refer intellectual acts 

 to the brain, the passions are referred to the viscera of the thorax or 

 abdomen. 2dly. That the effects of intellectual labour are referred to 

 the encephalon, as indicated by redness and heat of face, and beating 

 of the temporal arteries in violent mental contentions, &c. : whilst the 

 passions affect the organic functions, the heart is oppressed, and its 

 pulsations are retarded or suspended; the respiration becomes hurried 

 and interrupted ; the digestion impeded or deranged, &c. ; and 3dly. 

 That whilst our gestures and language refer intellect to the encepha- 

 lon, they refer emotions to the nutritive organs. If we wish to express 

 any action of the mind, or are desirous of recalling something that 

 has escaped the memory, the hand is carried to the head ; and we are 

 in the habit of designating a strong or weak intellect as a " strong or 

 weak head;" or we say, that the possessor has "much or little brain.". 

 On the other hand, if desirous of depicting the passions, the hand is 

 carried to the region of the stomach or heart; and the possessor of 

 benevolent or uncharitable sentiments is said to have a good or a bad 

 heart. Bichat properly adds, that this idea is not novel, inasmuch as 

 the ancients conceived the seat of the passions to be in the epigastric 

 centre ; that is, in the nervous plexuses situate in that region. He 

 remarks that amidst the varieties presented by the passions, according 

 to age, sex, temperament, idiosyncrasy, regimen, climate, and disease, 

 there is always a ratio between them and the degree of predominance 

 of the different nutritive apparatuses; and he concludes with a de- 

 duction, which ought not to have been hazarded without full reflection, 

 that as the functions of the nutritive organs, in which he ranges the 

 passions, are involuntary, and consequently uninfluenced by education, 

 education can have no influence over the passions, and the disposition 

 is consequently incapable of modification. 



The answer of MM. Gall 2 and Adelon 3 to the views of Bichat appears 

 to us to be irrefragable. How can we conceive, that viscera, whose 

 functions are known, and which differ so much from each other, are 

 agents of moral acts? The passions aresensorial phenomena, and like 

 all phenomena of the kind, must be presumed to be seated in essentially 

 nervous organs. Again ; when an injury befalls t^e brain, and the 

 intellectual faculties are perverted or suspended by it, the same thing 

 happens to the affective faculties; and if the viscera fulfil the high office 

 assigned to them, why are not the passions manifested from early in- 

 fancy, a period when the viscera are in existence and active? The 

 argument of Bichat that the phenomena which attend and follow the 

 passions, are referable to the nutritive organs is not absolute. The 

 functions of animal life are frequently disturbed by the passions, as 

 well as those of organic life. It is not uncommon for them to induce 

 convulsions, mania, epilepsy, and other affections of the encephalon. 

 The effect here, as M. Adelon remarks, is mistaken for the cause. The 



Eloge de Xavier Bichat, pl^^quel, p. 58, Paris, 1823. 

 8 Op. citat., i. 94. 



8 Art. Enc^ph. (Physiol.) in Diet, de Med., vii. 521, and Physiologic de 1'Homme, edit, 

 cit., i'. 510. 



