340 MENTAL FACULTIES. 



the former, is a relaxation. This, Gall remarks, would not be the 

 ease if the encephalon were a single organ, and acted as such; but it 

 is readily explicable under the doctrine of plurality of organs. It is 

 owing to a fresh- encephalic organ having been put in action. Tthly. 

 Insanity is frequently confined to one single train of ideas, as in the 

 variety called monomania, which is often caused by the constancy and 

 tenacity of an original exclusive idea. This is frequently removed by 

 exciting another idea opposed to the first, which distracts attention 

 from it. Is it possible, Gall asks, to comprehend these facts under the 

 hypothesis of unity of the encephalon ? Sthly. Idiocy and dementia 

 are often only partial, and it is not easy to conceive, under the idea 

 of the unity of the encephalon, how one faculty remains amidst the 

 abolition of all the others. 9thly. A wound or a physical injury of 

 the encephalon frequently modifies but one faculty, paralyzing, or aug- 

 menting it, and leaving every other uninjured. lOthly, and lastly. 

 Gall invokes the analogy of other nervous parts; and, as the great 

 sympathetic, medulla oblongata, and medulla spinalis are in his view 

 at least groups of special nervous systems, it is probably, he says, 

 the same with the encephalon. 



Such are the main arguments employed by Gall for proving, that 

 the encephalon consists of a plurality of organs, each of which is con- 

 cerned in the production of a special intellectual or moral faculty ; and 

 should they not carry conviction, it must be admitted that many of 

 them are ingenious and forcible, and all merit attention. 



It is a prevalent idea, that this notion of a plurality of organs is a 

 fantasy, which originated with Gall. Nothing is more erroneous : he 

 has adduced the opinions of numerous writers who preceded him, some 

 of whom have given figures of the cranium, with the seats of the dif- 

 ferent organs and faculties marked upon it. To this list might be 

 added numerous others. Aristotle, in whose works are found the germs 

 of many discoveries and speculations, thought that the first or anterior 

 ventricle of the brain, was the ventricle of common sense; because, 

 from it, according to him, the nerves of the five senses branched off. 

 The second ventricle, connected by a minute opening with the first, 

 he designated as the seat of imagination, judgment, and reflection; 

 and the third, as a storehouse into which the conceptions of the mind, 

 digested in the second ventricle, were transmitted for retention and 

 accumulation: he regarded it as the seat of memory. Bernard Gor- 

 don, in a work written in 1296, gives nearly the same account of the 

 brain. It contains, he says, three cells or ventricles. In the anterior 

 part of the first lies common sense; the function of which is to take 

 cognizance of the various forms and images received by the several 

 senses. In the posterior part of the first ventricle he places phantasia; 

 and in the anterior part of the second, imaginativa ; in the posterior 

 part of the middle lies estimativa. It would be a waste of time and 

 space, to adduce the absurd notions entertained by Gordon on this 

 subject. He thinks there are three faculties or virtues imaginatio, 

 cogitatio, and memoria each of which has a special organ engaged in 

 its production. 



