PROGRESS IN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 



not quite ready for it in 1825 ; for when Desmoulins an- 

 nounced his discovery to the French Academy, that 

 august and somewhat patriarchal body was moved to 

 quite unscientific wrath, and forbade the young icono- 

 clast the privilege of further hearings. From which it 

 is evident that the partially liberated spirit of the new 

 psychology had by no means freed itself altogether, at 

 the close of the first quarter of our century, from the 

 metaphysical cobwebs of its long incarceration. 



ii 



While studies of the brain were thus being inaugu- 

 rated, the nervous system, which is the channel of com- 

 munication between the brain and the outside world, 

 was being interrogated with even more tangible results. 

 The inaugural discovery was made in 1811 by Dr. 

 (afterwards Sir Charles) Bell, the famous English sur- 

 geon and experimental physiologist. It consisted of 

 the observation that the anterior roots of the spinal 

 nerves are given over to the function of conveying 

 motor impulses from the brain outward, whereas the 

 posterior roots convey solely sensory impulses to the 

 brain from without. Hitherto it had been supposed 

 that all nerves have a similar function, and the peculiar 

 distribution of the spinal nerves had been an unsolved 

 puzzle. 



Bell's discovery was epochal; but its full significance 

 was not appreciated for a decade, nor, indeed, was its 

 validity at first admitted. In Paris, in particular, then 

 the court of final appeal in all matters scientific, the al- 

 leged discovery was looked at askance, or quite ignored. 

 But in 1823 the subject was taken up by the recognized 

 2c 401.. 



