528 THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



muscular sense, i.e., the organ by which the mind acquires 

 that knowledge of the actual state and position of the 

 muscles which is essential to the exercise of the will upon 

 them ; and it must be admitted that all the facts just 

 referred to are as well explained on this hypothesis as on 

 that of the cerebellum being the organ for combining 

 movements. A harmonious combination of muscular 

 actions must depend as much on the capability of appre- 

 ciating the condition of the muscles with regard to their 

 tension, and to the force with which they are contracting, 

 as on the power which any special nerve-centre may possess 

 of exciting them to contraction. And it is because the 

 power of such harmonious movement would be equally 

 lost, whether the injury to the cerebellum involved injury 

 to the seat of muscular sense, or to the centre for com- 

 bining muscular actions, that experiments on the subject 

 afford no proof in one direction more than the other. 



Gall was led to believe, that the cerebellum is the organ 

 of physical love, or, as Spurzheim called it, of amativeness ; 

 and this view is generally received by phrenologists. The 

 facts favouring it are, first, several cases in which atrophy 

 of the testes and loss of sexual passion have been the 

 consequence of blows over the cerebellum, or wounds of its 

 substance ; secondly, cases in which disease of the cere- 

 bellum has been attended with almost constant erection of 

 the penis, and frequent seminal emissions ; and thirdly, 

 that it has seemed possible to estimate the degree of sexual 

 passion in different persons by an external examination of 

 the region of the cerebellum. 



The cases of disease of the cerebellum do not prove 

 much; for the same affections of the genital organs are 

 more generally observed in diseases, and in experimental 

 irritations of the medulla oblongata and upper part of the 

 spinal cord (Longet). 



The facts drawn from craniological examination will 

 receive the credit given to the system of which they are a 



