478 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



action. The scholastic notion of the older psychol- 

 ogists which divided the mental life into different powers 

 or faculties as the body was dissected into parts and 

 organs, lent itself to the idea of a localisation of these 

 faculties or powers in different spheres of the brain, 

 which Gall by a hasty generalisation maintained to be 

 distinguishable on the external surface of the skull. 

 Though these popular and practical applications, which 

 form the basis of phrenology, were speedily and easily 

 refuted, having always been regarded with suspicion by 

 the medical profession, the anatomical labours of Gall 

 were taken up and continued by others. Opinions 

 fluctuated between the different views of Flourens, who 

 insisted upon the unity of the central organ, as did 

 Herbart in psychology on the unity of the mind; of 

 G. H. Lewes, who assigns to the spinal cord together 

 with the brain an important and initiatory rdle in 

 conscious life; and of Hermann Munk and Friedrich 

 Goltz, who by carefully devised experiments on living 

 animals, by electrical irritation, and by systematic re- 

 moval of parts of the brain, have to some extent suc- 

 ceeded in delimiting the special " spheres in which the 

 various sensory nerves deliver their messages, and where 

 the latter are transformed into conceptions and mentally 

 stored." 1 Paul Broca had already, about forty years 

 ago, succeeded in localising the powers of speech. 



1 Du Bois-Reymond, ' Reden,' vol. 

 ii. p. 558 : " Though there is, in prin- 

 ciple, no hope that the causal 

 connection between material pro- 

 cesses in the brain and consciousness 

 will ever become clear to us, this 

 does not hinder our penetrating 

 deeply into a knowledge of those 



processes, or prevent such know- 

 ledge being of the greatest import- 

 ance and of fascinating interest. As 

 a first step in this direction there 

 presents itself naturally to our 

 understanding the localisation of 

 the different faculties into which 

 we naturally and systematically 



