PHYSIOLOGY OF THE PASSIONS. 555 



that have given rise to these phrases and gestures. It is evident that 

 anger accelerates the circulatory movement, and that joy has the same 

 effect, while grief and fear produce the opposite results. Extreme 

 emotions are sometimes followed by fatal syncope. Profound grief 

 causes a difficulty of respiration. Sudden fright checks the secretion 

 of bile. Independently of these palpable phenomena, the passions 

 modify profoundly the nutritive processes, and give rise to disordered 

 conditions, of a more or less grave nature. Here, again, language ac- 

 cords with physiology. To pine away with envy, or with remorse, to 

 waste away with grief, are expressions that attest the influence of the 

 passions on the organic life. Again, Bichat ingeniously notes the rela- 

 tion subsisting between the passions and the temperament. The indi- 

 vidual whose lungs are highly developed, and whose circulatory 

 system is specially vigorous, will naturally be of very impetuous dis- 

 position, choleric, passionate, and courageous. Where the biliary 

 system predominates, enviousness and hate seem to be more habitual. 

 The lymphatic temperament gives to the passions a quiet and indo- 

 lent character. Thus every thing, according to Bichat, goes to show 

 that the organic life is the terminus to which the passions tend, and 

 the centre from which they start, and that the animal life only suffers 

 from the rebound consecutively. If the focus of the animal life is the 

 brain, then what is the focus of the organic life ? What is the aj>pa- 

 ratus specially concerned in producing emotions and passional mani- 

 festations ? Bichat holds that there is no one organ on which this 

 office devolves exclusively, and he localizes the passions in what he 

 calls the epigastric centre ; that is to say, in the heart, the lungs, the 

 liver, the gall-bladder, and the ganglionic nerve-system, distributed 

 throughout these organs. Each of these is, according to him, the seat 

 of a distinct passion, and the movements that are determined by this 

 passion are perfectly involuntary. 



Such is Bichat's doctrine of the passions ; it is the ancient doctrine, 

 only developed and elucidated, reasoned out with greater precision, and 

 fortified with fresh proofs. It is correct in its analysis of the visceral 

 disturbances produced by the passions, but erroneous in that it regards 

 the viscera as their main-spring and origin. To Gall belongs the honor 

 of having proved that the passions primarily affect the brain, and not 

 the viscera. It was the experiments made by that great man which 

 showed that the brain is the organ of sentiments no less than of ideas. 

 His argument against Bichat's theory may be reduced to these funda- 

 mental observations : The heart and the diaphragm are only muscles, 

 the stomach and the liver only secretory apparatus, the kidneys only 

 an excretory apparatus, and the spleen only a sanguineous gland. Sev- 

 eral of these organs may suffer lesion or be removed and still the pas- 

 sions remain ; hence we cannot localize the passions in them. Gall, 

 in the next place, examines all the parts of the nervous system outside 

 of the brain, viz., the plexuses, the ganglia, the nerves, and the sensory 



