CHAPTER XXIV 



PHYSIOLOGY OF THE CEREBRUM 



IT has long been assumed that the brain represents the material substratum 

 of the psychical activities. Descartes regarded the pineal gland as the seat of 

 the mind; Willis located perception in the corpora striata, imagination in the 

 corpus callosum, and memory in the convolutions; and Cabanis expounded his 

 doctrine that the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile. 



Gall was the first to get a deeper insight into the significance of the brain 

 as the substratum of the psychical life of man, and he undertook to prove this 

 doctrine by actual observation. As Flourens, the most positive opponent of Gall, 

 put it, this doctrine existed in science before Gall, but after him it ruled there. 

 Investigating each sense by itself, Gall excluded all of them, one after the other, 

 from any direct participation in the powers of intelligence. So far from being 

 developed in proportion to the intelligence, most of the senses he saw are devel- 

 oped exactly in inverse proportion thereto. Taste and smell are sharper in the 

 mammals than in man, sight and hearing are more keenly developed in the birds 

 than in mammals; but the brain is everywhere developed in direct proportion 

 to intelligence. Intelligence remains after loss of sight and of hearing and 

 would probably survive all the senses. 



The brain therefore is the only organ of the mind. It consists however of 

 many different parts, and the question naturally arises whether all of these parts 

 are of the same importance for the psychical activities. Gall and his pupils had 

 the idea that only the cerebral hemispheres represent the substratum of the 

 mind, and from what we have learned in the preceding chapter, and as we shall 

 prove more fully in this one, we can now make this affirmation with much 

 greater definiteness. The lower parts of the brain probably have no direct sig- 

 nificance for the psychical functions. As has been observed in the preceding 

 chapter, their purpose seems to be rather to regulate quite independently of the 

 consciousness and of the will a number of the purely vegetative functions and 

 to connect the cerebral hemispheres with the remainder of the nervous system. 



Gall however was not satisfied merely to have demonstrated the importance 

 of the brain for the psychical life, but proceeded to work out a detailed psychology 

 which he endeavored to bring into line with his ideas concerning the functions 

 of the brain. 



Gall's psychology subdivided the intelligence into a number of different fac- 

 ulties entirely independent of one another, each of which had its own power of 

 perception, memory, judgment, imagination, etc. 



The most positive objections can be raised against this conception of the 

 mental personality of man as an aggregate of arbitrarily chosen and independent 

 faculties. This was early realized by Flourens who, in direct opposition to Gall, 

 laid great emphasis on the unity of the ego. Moreover, the faculties which 

 Gall postulated were not coordinated with each other, but were of all possible 

 and impossible kinds. Some were partly metaphysical, some related to the emo- 

 tions and some stood in direct connection with the sensations. 



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