



290 THE LINGERING ADMIRERS OF PHRENOLOGY. 
the body. Nerve corpuscles are bodies of which it is only 
necessary to say that they present a variable number of 
poles or branches, and there is no reasonable doubt that 
these poles are in direct continuity with nerve fibres. Ac- 
cording to circumstances little understood, these corpuscles 
_ have the property of modifying impressions or nervous influ- 
ence, and of directing them into different channels with 
which their poles communicate. Now the white substance 
of the brain and spinal cord contains only nerve fibres with- 
out any nerve corpuscles, these latter being found exclu- 
sively in the gray substance. It is quite plain, therefore, 
and universally recognized, that the white substance is only 
useful as containing channels of communication between dif- 
ferent parts of the gray, and also between the gray substance 
and the muscles and sensitive parts throughout the body. 
But even the gray substance is not always or even generally 
capable of being affected directly by the consciousness; and 
in the ease of the spinal cord, it is very certain that con- 
sciousness resides in no part of it, either white or gray. The 
spinal cord is the centre with which are connected the nerves 
of the muscles and integuments of the greater part of the 
body, and in the ordinary actions of T body what usually 
happens is this, that impressions made by the contact of 
external objects on the terminations of senso: y nerves in the 
‘integument are transmitted by them to the nerve corpuscles 
of the cord, and, through series of these, conducted to the 
parts of the brain, which are in immediate connection with 
consciousness ; while also, when the mind wills certain move- 
ments of the body, the stimulus proceeds from those parts 
of the brain, and, by some altogether unknown mechanism, 
is anemia so distributed that there extend from the gray 
matter of the cord impressions along the nerves so adjusted 
as to produce precisely that amount of contraction of mus- 
cles, of whose existence the mind is utterly ignorant, which 
necessary to effect the required result. Bai it is always 
: kind ads stimulus, the nervous influence, wherever 

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