SOURCES OF THE INTELLECTUAL SPHERE. 311 



heart certainly beats more forcibly in anger, but the legs fail us in fear ; 

 and if we refer anger to the heart, we must, by parity of reasoning, 

 refer fear to the legs. By reasoning of this kind, the passions might 

 be referred to the whole system, as there is no part which does not suffer 

 more or less during their violence. The error arises from our being 

 impressed with the most prominent effect of the passion the feeling 

 accompanying it and this is the cause of the gesture and the descriptive 

 language, to which Bichat has given unnecessary weight in his argu- 

 ment. If, then, the views of Bichat, regarding the seat of the passions, 

 ( be unfounded, the mischievous doctrine deduced from them that they 

 are irresistible, and cannot be modified by education falls to the ground. 

 His notion was, that the nutritive organs are the source of irritative 

 irradiations, which compel the brain to form the determinations that 

 constitute the passion, and to command the movements by which it is 

 appeased or satisfied. A similar view is embraced by M. Broussais, 1 

 who, however, conceives, that the passions can be fomented and increased 

 by attention, until they become predominant. Daily experience, indeed, 

 exhibits the powerful effect produced on the passions by well-directed 

 moral restraint. How many gratifying instances have we of persons, 

 whose habitual indulgence of the lowest passions and propensities had 

 rendered them outcasts from society, having become restored to their 

 proper place by exerting due control over their vicious inclinations and 

 habits! We can not only curb the expression of the passions, as we 

 are constantly compelled to do, in social intercourse ; but even modify 

 the internal susceptibility by well-directed habits of repression. 



Lastly. Many physiologists have considered the brain as a great 

 nervous centre for the reception and elaboration of different impressions 

 conveyed thither by the external senses; and absolutely requiring such 

 impressions for the mental manifestations. They consequently rank, 

 amongst the conditions necessary for such manifestations, not only the 

 brain which elaborates them, but the parts that convey to it the impres- 

 sions or materials on which it has to act; and conceive, that a necessary 

 connexion exists between these two orders of parts. The supporters of 

 these opinions ascribe the differences observed in the intellectual and 

 moral faculties of different persons as much to diversity in the number 

 and character of, the impressions, as to differences in the encephalon 

 itself. They do not all, however, agree as to the source of the impres- 

 sions, which they conceive to be the raw material for the intellectual and 

 moral acts. M. Condillac 2 and his school admit only one kind; those 

 proceeding from the external senses, which they term external impres- 

 sions. M. Cabanis, 3 in addition to these, admits others proceeding from 

 every organ in the body, which he terms internal impressions. 



The school of Condillac set out with the maxim ascribed to Aristotle, 

 ''nihil est in intelleetu quod non prius fuerit in sensu;" and they adopt, 

 as an elucidation of their doctrine, the ingenious idea of Condillac of 

 a statue, devoid of all sensation, which is made to receive each of the 



1 Examen des Doctrines Medicales, ii. 388, and Physiology applied to Pathology, Drs. Bell 

 and La Roche's translation, p. 136, Philadelphia, 1832. 



2 Traite des Sensations, i. 119. 



3 Rapport du Physique et du Moral de I'Homme, 4eme edit., par G. Pariset, Paris, 1824. 



