A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



mate co-ordination of impressions, which in their cruder 

 form are received by more primitive nervous tissues 

 the basal ganglia, the cerebellum and medulla, and 

 the spinal cord. 



This, of course, is equivalent to postulating the cere- 

 bral cortex as the exclusive seat of higher intellection. 

 This proposition, however, to which a safe induction 

 seems to lead, is far afield from the substantiation of 

 the old conception of brain localization, which was 

 based on faulty psychology and equally faulty induc- 

 tions from few premises. The details of Gall's system, 

 as propounded by generations of his mostly unworthy 

 followers, lie quite beyond the pale of scientific dis- 

 cussion. Yet, as I have said, a germ of truth was there 

 the idea of specialization of cerebral functions and 

 modern investigators have rescued that central con- 

 ception from the phrenological rubbish heap in which 

 its discoverer unfortunately left it buried. 



THE MINUTE STRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN 



The common ground of all these various lines of in- 

 vestigations of pathologist, anatomist, physiologist, 

 physicist, and psychologist is, clearly, the central 

 nervous system the spinal cord and the brain. The 

 importance of these structures as the foci of nervous 

 and mental activities has been recognized more and 

 more with each new accretion of knowledge, and the 

 efforts to fathom the secrets of their intimate structure 

 has been unceasing. For the earlier students, only the 

 crude methods of gross dissections and microscopical 

 inspection were available. These could reveal some- 

 thing, but of course the inner secrets were for the keener 



276 



