78 Phrenology. 



are, in addition to these, nerves of voluntary motion, by means of 

 which those parts of our bodies that are obedient to our will, (the 

 voluntary muscles,) receive the orders we give them — as in the 

 limbs, to walk, to run, to leap, to skate or dance ; or in the arms 

 to fence or fight, and the members promptly move in accordance ; 

 the features, by the action of the voluntary muscles of the face, 

 report our mental or moral movements, or our animal feelings ; 

 the eyes roll in their orbits " with a fine phrenzy," or shine with 

 intellectual lustre ; the tongue, the glottis, the muscles of respi- 

 ration, and all the parts that are concerned in speech or in pro- 

 ducing the tones of vocal music, give the voice its utterance, its 

 compass, its various cadence and intonations ; the fingers move 

 the pen or sweep the lyre, or strike the keys of the piano forte or 

 of the organ, or stop and open the apertures of the flute and cla- 

 rionet. All this and much more that need not be named, is done 

 in obedience to our will, but with a celerity and precision too 

 great even for thought to frame distinctly the conception, before 

 it is executed. 



Nor is this all : the organs of sense are furnished with nerves 

 appropriate to their destination of conveying to the mind their 

 peculiar impressions, while at the same time, like the whole 

 body, they are endowed with nerves of common sensation ; thus, 

 the tongue or the nostrils receive pain from the puncture of a 

 needle, while the needle does not produce taste in the tongue 

 nor smell in the nostrils ; but sugar placed on the tongue, or a 

 rose at the nostrils, produces the appropriate pleasurable sensation, 

 while pain would be excited at the same instant, in each of these 

 organs by the point of a pin or a needle. Here then are appropri- 

 ate nerves of infinite minuteness spread over the organs of sense — 

 other nerves also of common sensation, and in most cases, still 

 others of voluntary motion, while these complicated tissues of 

 nervous network, not only do exist together, but they perform 

 their functions simultaneously, although in perfect independence, 

 and without the smallest degree of confusion. It is admitted by 

 anatomists that a similar delicacy of nervous structure exists in 

 the brain, whose very object is to receive and convey nervous 

 influence, and since we can observe nervous fibres in all parts of 

 the body and also in the brain, until our eyes and our glasses fail 

 to detect such minute ramifications, we have therefore the same 

 evidence for all the minuteness of division among the nerves of 



