468 ON OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 



books and from most academic chairs is taught as "psychology' 1 is not 

 a true empirical science of the iniud, not the physiology of the mental 

 organs, but rather a fantastic metaphysics, compounded of one-sided 

 introspective observation of self and of uncritical comparisons, of mis- 

 understood data and incomplete experiments, of speculative errors and 

 religious dogmas. Most of the so-called psychologists know nothing 

 at all of the brain and organs of special sense, that wonderful and 

 incomparably complex apparatus which solely and alone is the organ 

 of the mental faculties in man and in animals. Most psychologists 

 possess today no knowledge of the significant problems of modern 

 experimental physiology and psychiatry, or they purposely ignore 

 them; indeed, they know nothing at all of the actual localization of the 

 separate mental faculties or their concurrence in the normal workings 

 of the single portions of the brain. 



The surprising disclosures which the minute anatomy and ontogeny 

 of the human brain, assisted by experimental physiology and pathol- 

 ogy, have made during the last four years are among the most impor- 

 tant discoveries of the nineteenth century. Indeed, these have not 

 hitherto been widely known, which is explained on the one hand by 

 the great difficulty of the subject which deals with the extremely com- 

 plicated structure of our brain, and on the other hand by the passive 

 stiff-necked resistance of the dominant school of psychology. The 

 localization of the higher mental faculties upon the cortex of the brain 

 was effected ten years ago by the suggestive researches of Goltz, 

 Munk, Wernicke, Edinger, and others. But recently (1894) Paul 

 Flechsig has succeeded in marking out the single parts of this region in 

 a definite manner; he has pointed out that in the gray cortical zone of 

 the brain mantle there are four clearly defined regions for the central 

 sense organs, or four "sensory spheres" — the sphere for general bodily 

 sensibility, in the parietal lobe; the sphere for smell, in the frontal lobe; 

 that for vision, in the occipital lobe, and that for hearing, in the temporal 

 lobe. Between these four " seats of sensation" lie the four great seats of 

 thought or "association centers" — the real organs of intellectual life. 

 They are the highest apparatus of the mental faculty, on which thought 

 and consciousness depend. In front the frontal brain, or "frontal asso- 

 ciation center;" behind and above the parietal brain or "parietal associ- 

 ation center; "behind and below the principal brain, or "great occipito- 

 temporal association center" (the most important of all), and finally, 

 deep underneath, in the interior, is placed the insula brain, or "island 

 of Beil," the "insular association center." These four seats of thought, 

 distinguished by peculiar and highly complicated nerve structure from 

 the intermediate seats of sensation, are the real "organs of thought," 

 the only true apparatus of our mental life. * * * 



The next question now is, What has paleontology to say regarding 

 these important results of comparative anatomy and their application 

 to the system of the primates and to phylogeuy ? For it is the petri- 



