674 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



centers when they were taken away. So they proceeded to slice away certain 

 portions of the brain, or wash them away through holes in the cranium, and then 

 noticed the results that followed. Not content with this they took advantage of 

 the law of nerve degeneration and produced this degeneration artificially. Wal- 

 ler, an Englishman, had shown that nerve tracts when separated from theJr cen- 

 ters degenerate in the direction in which they convey impulses. Those convey- 

 ing impulses outward then, as the nerves of motion, would degenerate outward 

 — the sensory nerves inward. Taking this as a starting point. Von Gladden, of 

 Munich, enucleated the eye balls and removed various portions of the brain from 

 new born animals, then allowed them to grow up and killed them to trace the por- 

 tion of brain that had atrophied. From the results of all these experiments com- 

 bined it has become pretty definitely settled in the scientific world that certain 

 portions of the brain have functions different from those of other parts. Inas- 

 much as the brains of animals differ in their arrangement from those of men, these 

 results must be compared with others and corrected before the final conclusion 

 was drawn, and then it was found out that the brain is to a certain extent a map 

 of the man. We now know with a sufficient degree of certainty that the fore- 

 part of the brain is taken up by the centers for muscular action. First comes the 

 centers for the muscle that raises the head; then that for the muscles of the arm 

 next that for the muscles of the mouth and throat; then those for the lower ex- 

 tremity. After this, in the back part of the brain," in the occipital and temporal 

 portion, as we call it, come the centers for sight, hearing, smell, etc. This, of 

 course, gives us a new topography, and so far is, perhaps, an improvement on 

 what Gall and Spurzheim furnished us, because it conforms more to the nature of 

 facts. But it does not give us a much nearer knowledge of the action of mind. 

 If it stopped there, it would be of interest to the physician and the man of 

 science, but would not much concern the philosopher. Like a new land discov- 

 ered, it would be so much added to the habitable globe, but would give us no 

 nearer insight into the principles that rule the world. 



Certain new things, however, have been added that materially change our 

 ideas of cerebral processes, and show us that terms which we before used to sig- 

 nify the ultimates of our mental analysis are capable of still further resolution. 

 No brain action, be it ideation, or simple reception, is simple, but all is complex 

 in the highest degree Back of it all — back of our consciousness — looms the 

 gigantic form of our unconsciousness. We feel. What does that imply? Some- 

 thing more than the mere contact of the hand with a body. It implies a change 

 in the equilibrium of nerve structure, extending from the skin up through the 

 different ganglia of the spinal cord to the cortex of the brain where a very com- 

 plicated interpretation goes on. That is the unconscious part in us. Whether 

 this is in the nature of a vibration, or a change in polarity like that by which the 

 needle follows the pole, we cannot tell. How the nerve fibers, the little lines of 

 telegraphic protoplasm, communicate with the hundred cortical cells whose united" 

 action is necessary for this interpretation we cannot tell. Only when the inter- 

 pretation is completed does it come up to our consciousness, arouse it as if by a 



