A PRIORI VIEWS, 3G9 



Cciuse), — only let the same veracity guide them with respect 

 both to wliat is old and to what is new, equally deterring 

 them from lightly supporting a current assertion, and from 

 lightly promulgating a novel assertion, — only let this be 

 done, and the humblest workers will bring their quota to 

 the general fund. How much remains to be done may be 

 gathered from the fact that, in the nervous system, which 

 has been studied more than any other, recent investigations 

 have led me to some unexpected results which, unless I 

 greatly deceive myself, must profoundly modify current 

 theory, and must assuredly modify our anatomical state- 

 ments.* 



"We laugh at the German who is said " to construct the 

 Idea of the Camel out of the depths of his moral conscious- 

 ness ; " yet we are often really little better when we persist 

 in constructing the forms of the simpler animals according 

 to the analogies of our own structure, instead of directly ob- 

 serving what Nature presents to us. No sooner do we per- 

 ceive certain manifestations of Sensibility, than we at once 

 conclude the presence of a nervous system ; no sooner have we 



* The facility with which theories are extemporised by many who have 

 little or no knowledge of the nervous structure, is only surpassed by the 

 facility and confidence with which men attribute phenomena to electricity. 

 It may be well, therefore, to state that our knowledge of the nervous sj^stcm 

 is at present in its infancy ; wo have not even established a secure basis ; we 

 have not established the primary dala. To quote the emphatic language of one 

 who has given his life to this subject : " Our knowledge even of the coarser 

 framework of the nervous system is still too much in its infancj' to permit us 

 to venture, with any success, on the constniction of theories respecting the 

 functions of its various elements." — STILLING, Ueber denBau der Nervm-pnmi- 

 tivfaser u. d. Nervenzelle, 1856, p. vii. 



