
KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 
PHRENOLOGY FOR THE MILLION, 
No. XLVU.—PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 
BY F. J. GALL, M.D. 
(Continued from Page 106.) 

Ler us now proceep with another branch of 
our interesting Inquiry :— 
Are our ACTIONS UNCONTROLLABLE BY REASON 
OF ouR PROPENSITIES AND oUR FACULTIES 
BEING INNATE ? 
What I have now said on moral liberty, proves 
how far I am from maintaining the uncontrol- 
able character of our actions. It is not because 
those who accuse me of this absurdity do not 
understand my principles; neither will I say 
that it is through ignorance, or through piety, 
that they have assumed so bitterly the character 
of censors of my doctrine. No; let us leave it to 
posterity to do justice to their motives and in- 
tentions, and let us pursue our own task of recti- 
fying erroneous ideas. 
Professor Ackermann of Heidelburg, whom my 
adversaries in Germany have adopted as their 
leader, and whom my adversaries in France have 
faithfully copied, has directed himself with a sus- 
picious animosity against the innateness of the 
moral qualities and intellectual faculties. If these 
dispositions are innate, said he,we have done with 
moral liberty; our actions are inevitable, and 
malefactors of all kinds have gained their cause. 
Observe to what means he has recourse to prove 
this consequence. 
OBJECTION. 
“ An organ is the real representation of the 
faculty itself. The organ being given, its action 
is so likewise. A muscle which contracts is a 
different muscle from one which is extended. 
This is the true definition of an organ ; but it 
cannot be adapted to the trash of Dr. Gall, since 
he would be obliged to say, that the organs being 
given, their peculiar action is so likewise, which 
annihilates the liberty of man.” 
ReEpty. 
All the objections of Ackermann turn upon the 
same false definition of organ, and I should be 
almost ashamed to regard them as worthy of the 
least attention, if they had not found so many 
partisans. 
If the organ and the manifestation of its 
functions are the same thing, the organ cannot 
exist, unless its function takes place, and the 
agent must disappear every time the function 
ceases; consequences which Professor Acker- 
mann himself derives immediately from his defi- 
nition. Thus, not to lose an organ, we must 
keep them all in eternal activity, together; we 
must always, and at the same time, taste, smell, 
hear, look, touch, run, sing, dance, speak, eat, 
think, learn by heart, judge, will, &c. In sleep, 
all the organs of animal life would disappear. 
Who does not see the absurdity of Ackermann’s 
definition, and, consequently, the absurdity of his 
whole argument ? 
I call an organ, the material condition which 
renders possible the exercise or the manifestation 
of a faculty. According to this definition, it 

165 
may be conceived that no exercise of a faculty 
is possible without an organ, but that the organ 
may exist without the faculty to which it belongs, 
being put in exercise. 
Professor Ackermann will have it, that men 
cannot refrain from doing things, for which they 
have received material conditions or organs. 
He does not perceive that he contradicts himself. 
According to him, the cochlea of the ear is the 
organ of music; according to him, too, the 
thalami nervorum opticorum (couches optiques,) 
and well-organised senses are the organs of the 
imitative arts; he likewise maintains that the 
organ of painting is a practised eye. Now, if it 
be true that no organ can exist without action 
and exercise, it follows that every man and every 
animal which has the cochlea in the ear, must 
perform or compose music; that every man and 
every animal possessing the thalami, and senses 
well organised, must be skilfulin the imitative arts, 
and that every. man and every animal having a 
practised eye, must constantly be engaged in 
painting. I shall not remark how singular it is, 
to hear it said that we can acquire an organ, to 
those who pretend to understand thoroughly the 
true principles of the physical organisation. 
OBJECTION. 
277. “‘When the organ becomes atrophous, 
the faculty of the aptitude which has existed by 
this organ, immediately ceases. This, experience 
teaches us. A musician of the greatest powers, 
if he does not cultivate music, loses the faculty of 
perceiving and producing tones; the painter 
loses his talent when he no longer exercises it. 
This is what will hold true of all the organs of 
the animal body. The muscles of an individual, 
obliged by disease to remain a long time stretched 
on the bed, become atrophous, and the faculty of 
motion diminishes in the same proportion. The 
eye becomes atrophous in the darkness of the 
prison,»and the faculty of seeing is proportionally 
diminished. What need we more to prove, that 
without a manifestation of the faculty, no new 
organ is produced or exists, and that the dimi- 
nution and cessation of activity, involve the 
wasting and gradual disappearance of the organ ?” 
ANSWER. 
I have several times repeated my confession of 
faith; it is, that the want of exercise may retard 
the activity and the development of an organ. It 
is on this that I found the advice to control as 
much as possible, in children, the exercise of 
organs which may become dangerous ; to prevent, 
by this means, the facility of action which would 
be the consequence, and to favor, on the contrary, 
the action of organs whose tendency is advanta- 
geous; but I have never inferred from this, that 
without some manifestation of the faculty, any 
organ can be produced, or can exist. Men and 
animals bring with them, in coming into the 
world, all the organs of the functions of the 
senses, and even the internal organs which 
Ackermann supposes, such as the organ of will, 
of comparison, of abstraction. It would be diffi- 
cult for him to call in question that we are born 
with eyes and their nerves, with the tongue, nose, 
ears, hands, and with the nerves of all these 
parts, with the great cerebral ganglion, heretofore 
called the thalami; in fine, with the two hemis_ 

— 


ee: 

