KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



in cages. They cannot be said to " live " 

 here. Theirs is an " existence " only ; for 

 they are never well, never happy. They 

 suffer a martyrdom in their confinement, and 

 die in the very prime of life. We throw 

 out these remarks advisedly, and in the 

 kindest spirit of humanity, trusting they 

 will not fall far short of their intended aim. 



PHXtENOLOGY FOR THE MILLION. 



No. XIV.-PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 



By F. J. Gall, M.D. 



{Continued from page 407.) 



We shall commence to-day with the First 

 Section of what Dr. Gall calls the Moral 

 Part of his "Work. This treats specially of The 

 Nature of Man, and oe the Difference be- 

 tween Vegetable and Animal Life. 



The phenomena which take place in Man, 

 from the moment of his conception to that of his 

 death, taken together, constitute the nature of 

 man. 



All these phenomena are perhaps the result of 

 one single and uniform principle; but they 

 manifest themselves under forms and conditions 

 so different, that to acquire a clear and detailed 

 knowledge of them, we must examine them 

 under points of view, as various as these forms 

 and conditions themselves; we must study man 

 in all his relations, in all his points of contact 

 with entire nature. 



The greatest obstacle which has ever been op- 

 posed to the knowledge of man's nature, is that 

 of insulating him from other beings, and endea- 

 voring to remove him from the dominion of the 

 laws which govern him. 



We may, without inconvenience, neglect the 

 relation of man to unorganised nature. Let us 

 leave to the cultivator of natural history, the care 

 of determining the laws of contractility, elasti- 

 city, weight, attraction, crystallisation, the action 

 of capillary tubes, electricity, &c. But, it is 

 impossible to avoid an endless confusion of words 

 and notions, and not to lose ourselves in the 

 most absurd explanations, unless we distinguish 

 the functions which man has in common with 

 the vegetable kingdom, from those which are 

 peculiar to him as an animal. 



The vegetable kingdom offers us organisation 

 infinitely varied. We recognise in it the act of 

 fecundation, assimilation, nutrition, growth, a 

 species of circulation, secretions, and excretions, 

 irritability, and an elective force, or a faculty of 

 placing itself in relation with objects out of itself; 

 of choosing, for example, the most suitable nou- 

 rishment; of attaching itself to surrounding 

 objects; of avoiding or seeking the light; of 

 closing the leaves or flowers by day or by 

 night, &c. All these operations take place from 

 the influence of a blind necessity, without sensa- 

 tion, consciousness, or will. For this reason we 

 assign to the vegetable kingdom a life, but a 

 life purely organic, automatic, vegetative ; and as 

 all this passes in the interior of the organism 



itself, and the individual takes no account of the 

 action of external things, it has been thought 

 proper to call it an internal life. Those who 

 find the supposition of "a soul," necessary to 

 explain these phenomena, give it the name of a 

 vegetative soul. 



The same functions are exercised in animals 

 and in man. Fecundation, assimilation, nutri- 

 tion, growth, secretions, and excretions, &c, are 

 performed in them equally by the laws of organi- 

 sation, by a blind necessity, without perception, 

 consciousness, or will. Man and animals, there- 

 fore, share the vegetative, automatic life, with 

 the vegetable kingdom. But they likewise enjoy 

 functions of a more elevated and essentially dif- 

 ferent order; they possess the faculty of sensi- 

 bility, of perceiving impressions, external and 

 internal; they have the consciousness of their 

 existence; they exercise voluntary movements, 

 and the functions of the senses; they are en- 

 dowed with mechanical aptitudes for industry; 

 with instincts, propensities, sentiments, talents; 

 with moral qualities and intellectual faculties. 



As soon as one or more of these functions take 

 place in any being, it is considered as possessing 

 animal life. And as men have thought, that all 

 these faculties were the product of impressions 

 on the senses, it has been called the life of rela- 

 tion, or external life. 



It is therefore with reason, that the parts of 

 the body have been divided into organs of vege- 

 table life, and organs of animal life. 



Those readers who are not versed in the study 

 of natural history, will here ask me, What is 

 the organ, or what are the organs of animal lifo? 

 By what means has nature effected all its pheno- 

 mena, from simple sensation to the most compli- 

 cated faculties, moral and intellectual? 



These means, these organs, form a peculiar 

 apparatus, of which vegetables and zoophytes are 

 still deprived: it is the nervous system. The 

 nerves alone are the instruments of sensibility, 

 of voluntary movement, of the functions of the 

 senses. Without a nervous system, there is no 

 mechanical aptitude, no instinct, no propensity, 

 no sentiment, talent, moral quality, or intellec- 

 tual faculty ; no affection, no passion. 



Each particular order of the functions of 

 animal life is affected by a peculiar nervous sys- 

 tem, by particular nerves, distinct from the 

 other nervous systems, and from other nerves. 

 There is a peculiar nervous system for the 

 viscera, and tor the vessels principally destined 

 to vegetable life; there is a nervous system, the 

 instrument of voluntary movements; there is 

 one which belongs to the functions of the senses; 

 finally, the noblest in animals and in man the 

 most considerable, the brain, has all the others 

 under its dominion; it is the source of all per- 

 ception, the seat of every instinct, of every 

 propensity, of all power, moral and intellectual. 

 In order to proceed from the simple to the 

 compound, I shall give my readers some views 

 of the nervous system, with which the animal 

 character commences, but the functions of which 

 belong even more to vegetable than to animal 

 life. 



In all animals placed in the scale of living 

 beings above the zoophytes, — that is, in all 

 animals properly so called, there exist one or 



