ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 479 



Whilst animal electricity and the examination of the 

 brain were taken np with ardour, over-valued by popular- 

 isers, and developed into fanciful theories which postponed 

 for a long time the sober inquiries of science, another very 

 fruitful vein of reasoning and research was struck early 

 in the century, but left unexplored for fifty years. Since 

 then it has been followed with success and profit. 



divide nientiil activity. Out of 

 the desire for such localisation 

 there sprang up the fundamental 

 idea of the phrenological follies ; 

 but, as so often, here also scien- 

 titic superstition contained a kernel 

 of truth. In the same cortex 

 of the brain in which Gall and 

 Spurzheim located their badly- 

 chosen thirty-five mental faculties, 

 Munk now describes the spheres in 

 ■wliich the various sensory nerves 

 deliver their messages, and where 

 the latter are transformed into con- 

 ceptions and stored. Thus, for the 

 first time in the domain of sensa- 

 tion and intellection, a local basis 

 of mental activity has been demon- 

 strated, as had been done before 

 by Paul Broca in the domain of 

 volition, in the localisation of the 

 faculty of speech." Most modern 

 jisycho-physicists would probably 

 accept this statement with slight 

 modifications ; it is therefoie well 

 to note that one of the foremost 

 and most original workers in this 

 field of research, Prof. Fr. Goltz, 

 takes a different view of the result 

 of the experiments of himself and 

 others. He does not consider 

 Munk's teachings as the foundation 

 of a physiology of the brain, but 

 looks upon them as a system of 

 error, and " hopes to see the day 

 when all the beautifully elaborated 

 modern hypotheses of circumscribed 

 centres of the cortex will be laid in 

 the same grave in which Gall's 

 phrenology rests" (quoted from 



Goltz's memoirs, ' Uber die Verrich- 

 tungen des Grosshirns,' in Pfliiger's 

 Archiv, bj' Carl Hauptmann, ' Die 

 Metaphysik in der modernen Bio- 

 logie' (1804), p. 2-10). Prof. Fer- 

 rier, whose ' Functions of the 

 Brain' (2nd ed.) is a standaid 

 work in the English language, takes 

 up a less negative position ; yet he 

 says (p. 23) : " We are still on the 

 threshold of the inquiry, and it 

 may be questioned whether the 

 time has even yet arrived for an 

 attempt to explain the mechanism 

 of the brain and its functions. To 

 thoughtful minds the time may 

 seem as far off as ever." Prof. 

 William James of Harvard, in his 

 excellent 'Principles of Psychology' 

 (2 vols., 1891), gives, in his first 

 chapter, a succinct account of the 

 " localisation-question," which, he 

 thinks, " stands firm in its main out- 

 line " (vol. i. p. 162). The standard 

 work in tlie German language is 

 Prof. Wundt's ' Physiologische 

 P.sychologie ' (2 vols., 4th ed., 

 1893), which gives in the first divi- 

 sion (chaps. 4, 5) a very exhaustive 

 account of the experimental and 

 theoretical work on localisation. 

 Prof. Wundt himself takes up a 

 position lying between the doctrine 

 of sharp delimitation and that of a 

 denial of local distinctions (vol. i. p. 

 159), but admits that the whole 

 question is still highly contro- 

 versial, though latterly the appar- 

 ent diH'erences of opinion have been 

 nuicii toned down (vol. i. p. 240). 



