36 MIND. 



with the character of his body, being equally excitable, languid, 

 or torpid, evidently because the brain is of the same character as 

 the rest of the body to which it belongs, the female mind ex- 

 ceeds the male in excitability as much as her body 6 ; the qualities 

 of the mind are also hereditary f , which they could not be, unless 

 they were, like our other qualities, corporeal conditions ; and the 

 mind is often disordered upon the disappearance of a bodily com- 

 plaint, just as other organs, besides the brain, are affected under 

 similar circumstances, the retrocession of an eruption may affect 

 the lungs, causing asthma ; the bowels, causing enteritis ; or the 

 brain, causing insanity, phthisis and insanity sometimes alter- 



younger, is developed and perfectly formed towards the age of from eighteen to 

 twenty. The youth, the young man, and the young girl, take an interest in 

 each other ; and the talents and inclinations are exercised and perfected till they 

 obtain maturity. From thirty or forty years of age, the cerebrum and cerebellum 

 remain nearly stationary till the fiftieth or seventieth year, according to individual 

 constitution. The same is the case with the moral and intellectual powers. 

 Certain parts of the brain, however, especially those in the anterior- inferior region 

 of the forehead, have at this time already begun to diminish ; the memory is less 

 faithful, and the imagination less ardent, and hint to us the approach of old age, 

 and the decline of our faculties. 



" At length all the cerebral mass gradually loses its nervous turgescence ; it 

 diminishes, wastes, shrinks (' the convolutions lie farther from each other ; ' 

 t. i. p. 192.) ; the consistence of its two substances undergoes alteration. The 

 moral and intellectual powers sink in proportion ; the inclinations, the talents 

 disappear, the affairs of the world assume a gloomy aspect, the past only is 

 considered good ; and, at the age of decrepitude, there remains only imbecility, 

 the weakness of a second childhood." Gall, 1. c. t. ii. p. 156. sqq. ; also 

 t. iii. p. 28. sqq. Dr. Magendie allows that " the brain is almost liquid in the 

 foetus, firmer in infancy, and still more so in manhood " (Precis de Physiologic) ; 

 that above the age of seventy, the weight of the brain is on the average yyth less 

 than in the prime of life ; and that the convolutions are then often distant half an 

 inch from each other, and their surface very distant from the cranium, as Cotugno 

 had observed. Journ. de Physiol. t. vii. p. 5. 87. 



e " Mulieres sunt, ferme tit pueri, levi sententia." Terence, Hecyra. 



f " Parentibus liberi similes sunt non vultum modo et corporis formam, sed 

 animi indolem, Bt virtutes, et vitia. Claudia gens din Romas floruit impigra, 

 ferox, superba : eadem illachrymabilem Tiberium, tristissimum tyrannum pro- 

 duxit : tandem in immanem Caligulam et Claudium, et Agrippinam, ipsumque 

 demum Neronem, post sexcentos annos desitura." Gregory, Conspectus Medi- 

 cinee Theoretics. So true is the verse 



" Et patrum in natos abeunt, cum semine, mores." 



