300 SPECIAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



moral nature is more plastic, more expansible, and more improvable, 

 than that of animals. Animals may be trained and become obedient 

 to man, probably from fear of punishment, or expectation of reward, 

 occasionally perhaps from emulation ; they may be taught to do this, 

 and not to do that ; but they can have no abstract conception of right 

 or wrong. Man, however, undoubtedly may act irrespectively of per- 

 sonal motives without fear of consequences, regardless of applause or 

 gain, and frequently at the cost of self. Animals obey a master, but 

 even then without a notion of obedience in the abstract ; but man 

 obeys his judgment, knows what is obedience, and, moreover, has the 

 abstract notion of rectitude. 



In the contemplation of abstract right and wrong, as applied to his 

 own actions, man feels his imperfections, but also perceives his own 

 capacity for advancement and improvement, both physical, intellectual, 

 and moral. In the interests of himself and of his race, he desires this 

 advancement. By his intellectual powers, he not only inquires into 

 causes and effects, in natural phenomena, but, by the application of 

 his knowledge, through force of will, ending in invention, he renders 

 the knowledge he has so obtained, useful to his fellow man, and to his 

 posterity. Moreover, he desires and loves knowledge for its own sake, 

 or for the pleasure it affords him, as a means of insight into the works 

 and phenomena of Nature. In the sphere of morals, the desire for 

 improvement is also a characteristic of Humanity, considered in the 

 abstract, though it may be lost in the individual man ; it has been even 

 regarded as a Human instinct. But the standard of perfection con- 

 ceivable by man, is felt to be beyond his actual reach; and, if all 

 instincts have an object, this also must have its -aim, to be attained, if 

 not in a material, in a spiritual state of existence. 



General Summary of the Functions of the Cerebro- Spinal 

 Nervous System. 



Having now described, in detail, the offices of the several parts of 

 the cerebro-spinal nervous system, and having stated the experimental 

 and other facts, on which our yet imperfect knowledge of those func- 

 tions is based, it may be useful to point out, by way of general sum- 

 mary, the parts concerned in the exercise of each of those leading 

 functions. 



Psychical faculties. There is reason to believe, that all the mental 

 phenomena, properly so called, commencing with perception, and 

 passing on to ideation, memory, reasoning, and volition, also including 

 perhaps the emotions, and, if we can regard it as a distinct human 

 faculty, the power of employing spoken or written signs or symbols, 

 to express ideas and notions, or the faculty of language, are exer- 

 cised or manifested fundamentally, through the agency of the cerebral 

 hemispheres, especially through the action of the gray matter cover- 

 ing those hemispheres. All these faculties are injured or lost, from 

 sections, injuries, diseases, or destruction of those parts. 



Sensation. Mere sensation, without the distinctness and memory 

 associated with the higher faculties of attention, perception, and idea- 



