LECTURE IV. 101 



brain are less developed than others, and such conditions may- 

 be noted in the analysis of the intellectual functions. We 

 may thus, perhaps, find that in individuals of high intellect, 

 this or that lobe of the cerebrum is more developed than 

 another ; that the convolutions on the surface are more dis- 

 tinctly and differently marked in eminent persons than in per- 

 sons of lower rank. Such investigations may embrace the ' 

 different races of mankind, and animals also, though we must 

 not forget that the inferences and analogies become more de- 

 ceptive in proportion as we go further off" from the human 

 type. We may also caU to our aid cases in which, from arrest 

 of development, the brain has preserved the foetal type, in 

 consequence of which the intellectual life approaches that of 

 the animal. A close examination of the cerebral structure of 

 such idiots may teach us which are the special parts arrested 

 in their development, and by comparing with the obtained data 

 the various manifestations of intellectual activity, we may, 

 perhaps, arrive at some conclusions as regards the functions of 

 individual parts of the brain. 



The so-called science of phrenology rests, as is well known, 

 upon such inferences, which, however, labour under the great 

 drawback that on the one hand the capacities are to be marked 

 on the outer table of the skull, and, on the other hand, a local- 

 isation is claimed which in no ways corresponds either with the 

 intellectual faculties, or with the details of the cerebral struc- 

 ture. However correct the fundamental principle of phre- 

 nology may be, that individual functions must correspond to 

 individual parts of the organ, the inferences drawn from it are 

 none the less exceedingly erroneous. On viewing the brain 

 from above, each hemisphere appears as one mass; exhibiting, 

 indeed, convolutions and intermediate sulci, but no actual divi- 

 sion. It is different, however, when we view the brain from 

 the sides or from below. In the latter case we immediately per- 

 ceive in the anterior part a deep fissure which runs from the 

 anterior margin of the cerebellum to the corresponding margin 

 of the cerebrum, and separates two lobes which, when the 

 brain is viewed laterally, extend far lower down than the anterior 

 lobes. The basis of the anterior, or frontal lobes, as we shall 



