320 MENTAL FACULTIES. 



has been made by M. Cabanis ; and if the intellectual and moral manifes- 

 tations vary according to sex, temperament, climate, regimen, state of 

 health, &c., it is because the encephalon is, under these circumstances, 

 in different conditions. The chief facts, on which M. Cabanis rests his 

 doctrine, are, the coincidence between the developement of the testi- 

 cles arid the appearance of the venereal appetite; and the suppression 

 of this appetite after castration. It must be recollected, however, that 

 these are not the only changes, that happen simultaneously at puberty. 

 The voice assumes a very different character ; but the change in the 

 voice is not a cerebral phenomenon. It is dependent upon the deve- 

 lopement of its organ, the larynx. Yet castration, prior to puberty, 

 has a decided effect upon it ; preventing it from becoming raucous and 

 unmelodious. All these developements are synchronous ; but not di- 

 rectly consequent upon each other. The generative function has two 

 organs, one central, the other external; and it is not surprising, that 

 both should undergo their developement at the same period. 



On the whole, we are perhaps justified in concluding, that the brain 

 alone is the organ of the intellectual and moral faculties. Yet, as 

 before remarked, there is great force in the facts and arguments brought 

 forward by Dr. Carpenter in favour of the emotional acts being seated 

 in what, he terms, the sensorial ganglia : and that as we descend in the 

 animal scale, the cerebrum or organ of the mental manifestations be- 

 comes less and less developed, until we ultimately find an encephalic 

 organization in which a common sensorium for the reception of sensation 

 and the origination of motion may alone exist ; without any organ for 

 the recording of impressions like the cerebrum in more highly endowed 

 organisms. In such case, the motions may be mere responses to sen- 

 sations experienced, without the presence of the slightest consciousness 

 on the part of the being, or knowledge of the adaptation of means to 

 ends. Still, it may be a question whether such sensations and responsive 

 motions are not possessed by animals devoid of anything resembling the 

 encephalic sensory ganglia of higher organisms, and which are wholly 

 supplied with nerves of the excito-motory class as the stomato-gastric. 

 The interesting topic of the various instinctive operations of the frame 

 will be considered in another part of this work. We shall there find, 

 that instinct cannot in all cases be defined, in the language of M. 

 Broussais, 1 to consist in sensations originating in the internal and ex- 

 ternal sensitive surfaces, which solicit the cerebral centre to acts neces- 

 sary for the exercise of the functions, such acts being frequently 

 executed without the participation of mind, and even in its absence, 

 inasmuch as it is not confined to beings possessed of brain, but exists 

 also in the vegetable. 



Having now decided upon the organ of the mental and moral facul- 

 ties, it would be necessary, according to the system adopted in this work, 

 to describe its anatomy; but this has been done elsewhere. 



1 Physiol. appliquee a la Pathologie, ch. vii. ; or Drs. Bell and La Roche's translation, 

 PhilacL 1832. 



