CHAP. XXV.] PHRENOLOGY : OL.D AND NEW. 515 



early part of the eighteenth century the following views were also 

 expressed as to the uses of certain portions of the brain. Vieussens 

 placed the seat of imagination in the centrum ovale ; Laricisi and 

 Peyronie maintained that all sensation is felt and motion excited 

 in the corpus callosum. Meyer placed the seat of memory in the 

 cortical matter, sensation at the origin of the nerves, and abstract 

 ideas in the cerebellum ; many, however, acknowledged that it was 

 not possible to determine the seat of the mental faculties with any 

 accuracy, although there could be no doubt that nature had not 

 formed so many and so various divisions of the cerebrum and 

 cerebellum without an object. 



Now came another crisis in the history of opinions concerning 

 the brain and its functions. In preceding times the notion of the 

 existence of 'animal spirits' was received in an unquestioning 

 manner; there had been much discussion as to their mode of 

 origin, as to their principal seat, and as to their essential nature; 

 but these problems were at last set aside for one which ought to 

 have preceded them. What evidence was forthcoming as to their 

 very existence? The supposition that what had been termed 

 ' animal spirits ' existed at all now seemed to many a gratuitous 

 assumption. After much discussion amongst the Stahlians and 

 their opponents, we find Boerhave, Haller (1766) and Tissot acting 

 as the last champions of the doctrine and striving to establish it 

 as a truth. " Notwithstanding," says Prochaska, " the authority 

 of these great names, the love of truth excited distinguished 

 men, who advanced doubts as to this hypothesis of the animal 

 spirits, and who showed that the arguments adduced in its 

 favour proved nothing when carefully analysed, and that the 

 whole h} r pothesis was altogether devoid of truth." Writing, there- 

 fore, in 1784, Prochaska says : " We will term the cause latent in 

 the pulp of the nerves, producing its effect and not, as yet ascer- 

 tained, the vis nervosa ; we will arrange its observed effects, which 

 are the functions of the nervous system, and discover its laws." 



The same writer considered it " by no means improbable that each 

 division of the intellect has its allotted organ in the brain," though 

 as he himself frankly admitted, nothing definite could at that time 

 be eaid on the subject. " Hitherto, it has not been possible," he 

 adds, " to determine v/hat portions of the cerebrum or the cerebellum 

 are specially subservient to this or that faculty of the mind. The 

 conjectures by which eminent men have attempted to deteroine 

 these are extremely improbable, and that department of physiology 



L L 2 



