32 MIND. 



The ANIMAL FUNCTIONS demonstrate MIND. This is seated in 

 the brain, to which the spinal marrow, nerves, and voluntary 

 muscles are subservient. MIND is the functional power of the 

 living brain. As I cannot conceive life any more than the power 

 of attraction unless possessed by matter, so I cannot conceive 

 mind unless possessed by a brain, or by some nervous organ, 

 whatever name we may choose to give it, endowed with life. I 

 speak of terrestrial or animal mind ; with angelic and divine na- 

 ture we have nothing to do, and of them we know, in the same 

 respects, nothing. To call the human mind positively a ray of 

 the divinity, (Divinez particula aura *, Ex ipso Deo decerptus, 

 Ex universa mente delibatus x ,) appears to me absolute nonsense. 

 Brutes are as really endowed with mind, with a consciousness 

 of personality, with feelings, desires, and will, as man. * Every 

 child is conscious that it thinks with its head, and common lan- 

 guage designates this part as the seat of mind. z Observation 

 shows that superiority of mind in the animal creation is exactly 

 commensurate with superiority of brain * ; that activity of mind 



u Horace. 



x Cicero, De Senectute et Queest. Tuscul. 



J See Gall, 1. c. t. 1. p. 56. sqq. Aristotle no sooner asserts that a share of 

 divinity is bestowed on man " only of all animals," than he is obliged to retract, 

 and say, " or most of all animals," fy }i6.\i(rra iravruv. Depart, animal. 1. ii. c. 10. 



z A stupid person is honoured with the expressions numb-set*//, thick-foarf, 

 addle-pafed, shallow-pated, badly furnished in the upper story; a clever person 

 with strong-headed, long-headed, having plenty of brains ; a madman is said to 

 be wrong in the head, touched in the noddle, &c. A person whose memory or 

 power of attention is impaired, says he has no head, &c. When a catarrh chiefly 

 affects the head, we complain of stupidity, because " we have such a cold in the 

 head," &c. A man is always said to have an idea in his head. 



a " The same progression which exists in the gradual perfection of animal 

 organisation, as far as regards vegetable life only, is observed in the gradual 

 perfection of the nervous system, and of animal life which depends upon it. 

 Comparative anatomy has followed the gradual perfection of animals, from the 

 most simple absorbent vessels to the most complicated apparatus of mastication, 

 deglutition, and digestion, to the most perfect circulation. With every fresh 

 viscus, every fresh apparatus for sensation, is discovered a fresh function, and 

 this function is more complicated in proportion as the organisation of the viscus 

 or apparatus of sensation is more perfect. The stomach, kidneys, lungs, heart, 

 eyes, ears, are the more complicated as their functions become so. 



" The same gradation may be demonstrated in the structure of the brains of the 

 different species. I have demonstrated in the preceding chapter, that the exist- 

 ence of each moral quality and intellectual faculty, depends solely upon the 



