CuAP. XXV.] PHRENOLOGY : OLD AND NEW. 517 



cerned with Perceptions, Volitions, and other Mental 

 Processes. 



Again, we shall have to rely upon the same three classes 

 of facts as constituted the hasis for our conclusions in the 

 previous chapter, though they will not be appealed to in 

 quite the same relative proportions.* 



The notion that the Brain is the principal organ of Mind, 

 and that there is a localization of function in its several 

 parts, was, as we have seen, a fundamental position fi Ily 

 realized by Prochaska and others, long before Gall and 

 Spurzheim (1805-1826) began zealously to study the ana- 

 tomy of the organ and to promulgate in connection there- 

 with a ' Physiognomical System ' which soon attracted 

 great attention under the name of * Phrenology.' Its 

 authors were enthusiasts who attempted to systematize an 

 extremely complex subject prematurely, when knowledge 

 in regard to it was altogether in its infancy — and that, 

 too, without professing to have much special knowledge or 

 ability for the carrying out of at least one half of the work 

 involved in such an enterprise. 



Gall and Spurzheim were well abreast of, and even 

 leaders of the knowledge of their day in regard to the 

 anatomy of the Brain, yet at the time they elaborated their 

 doctrines notbing was known to them, any more than to 

 their predecessors, as to the real physiological distinction 

 existing between the 'grey' and the 'white' substance of the 

 Cerebrum. They, like those who had gone before them, 

 regarded the white matter of the hemispheres as the essen- 

 tial nervous substance, while the Grey Matter was con- 

 sidered to be " the matrix of the nervous fibres" — a forma- 

 tive material, in fact, which, wherever it was found, served 

 only as a nucleus for the adequate production of nerve 

 fibres. t The Grey Matter of the Convolutions, there- 



* See p 477. f See Spurzlieim's " Anatomy of the Brain," p. 7. 

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