258 The Older Doctrines [lect. 



the dorsal medulla (spinal cord), and cut it across, all the parts 

 supplied with nerves leaving the medulla below the section will 

 be deprived of sensation and movement. 



In the chapter on the brain from which we were quoting 

 he continues thus : 



" But how the brain performs its functions in imagination, 

 " in reasoning, in thinking and in memory (or in whatever way, 

 " following the dogmas of this or that man, you prefer to classify 

 " or name the several actions of the chief soul), I can form no 

 " opinion whatever. Nor do I think that anything more will be 

 " found out by anatomy or by the methods of those theologians 

 " who deny to brute animals all power of reasoning, and indeed 

 " all the faculties belonging to what we call the chief soul. For 

 "as regards the structure of the brain, the monkey, dog, horse, 

 " cat, and all quadrupeds which I have hitherto examined, and 

 "indeed all birds, and many kinds of fish, resemble man in 

 "almost every particular. Nor do we by dissection come 

 " upon any difference which would indicate that the functions 

 "of those animals should be treated otherwise than those of 

 " man ; unless perchance anyone says, and that rightly, that the 

 " mass of the brain attains its highest dimensions in man, which 

 " we know to be the most perfect animal, and that his brain is 

 "found to be bigger than that of three oxen; and then in 

 " proportion to the size of the body, first the ape, and next the 

 "dog exhibit a large brain, suggesting that animals excel in 

 " the size of their brains in proportion as they seem the more 

 "openly and clearly to be endowed with the faculties of the 

 "chief soul. Indeed the more I examine the nature of the 

 " heart, the liver, the testes, and the organs secondary to these, 

 " the functions performed by which are, there can be no doubt, 

 " the same in us as in other animals, and the more I persuade 

 " myself that we ought not to draw conclusions concerning the 

 " operations of the chief soul, other than those taught by our 

 "most holy and true religion, the more I wonder at what I 

 "read in the scholastic theologians and the lay philosophers 

 " concerning the three ventricles with which they say the brain 

 "is supplied." 



And then he goes on to ridicule the view held by these 



