298 The Older Doctrines [lect. 



brain. He recalls the results arrived at by experiment that 

 the medulla, the central part of the brain, is the seat of 

 sensation and the source of muscular movemeut. "Nor in 

 " the cortex of the brain alone is the seat of sensation or 

 " the full origin of the cause of muscular movement ; each of 

 " these lies also in the medulla of the cerebrum and of the 

 " cerebellum." " This is not the place to speak about the 

 " soul, but the soul has nothing in common with the body 

 " other than sensation and movement. Now both sensation 

 "and movement have their source in the medulla of the 

 " brain. This therefore is the seat of the soul." 



Asking the question whether the seat of the soul can be 

 defined within narrower limits, he remarks that "no narrower 

 "seat can be allotted to the soul than the conjoint origin of 

 " all the nerves ; nor can any structure be proposed as its seat 

 " except that to which we can trace all the nerves. For it will 

 "be easily understood that the sensorium commune ought to 

 " lack no feeling of any part of the whole animated body nor 

 "any nerve which can convey from any part of the body the 

 " impression of external objects. And the same may be said 

 " of the nerves of movement. Wherefore, even quite apart from 

 " the experimental results described above, we cannot admit 

 " as the exclusive seat of the soul, either the corpus callosum 

 " or the septum lucidum or the tiny pineal gland, or the corpora 

 " striata or any particular region of the brain." 



There remains still a somewhat different question whether 

 different parts of the brain may not correspond to different 

 functions of the soul. Some experiments and some of the 

 phenomena of disease do, he admits, give a certain support to 

 this, and the anatomical evidence points in the same direction ; 

 we may for instance suppose that the parts of the brain around 

 the entrance of the optic nerve are especially concerned in 

 vision, and the like. We may perhaps go a certain way in 

 this direction, but a very little way. " Our present knowledge 

 " does not permit us to speak with any show of truth about 

 " the more complicated functions of the mind or to assign in 

 "the brain to imagination its seat, to common sensation its 

 "seat, to memory its seat. Hypotheses of this kind have in 



