166 KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 

pheres of the brain. These parts, therefore, 
exist, and are born previous to all exercise, before 
any manifestation of faculty; and though so 
many animals remain deaf and blind for several 
days, and new-born infants can neither compare 
nor abstract, yet all their parts tend, by degrees, 
to their perfection, and become successively capa- 
ble of exercising their functions. For the rest, 
one hardly knows how to answer the metaphysics 
of Professor Ackermann. It would follow, by 
taking his opinions literally, that the atrophy of 
organs is impossible; for if it be true, as he often 
repeats, that the existence of the organ coincides 
necessarily with the manifestation of the faculty, 
it ought to result that the organs, so long as they 
are not violently destroyed by death, are con- 
tinually exercised, and thus preserve their exis- 
tence and integrity. 
OBJECTION. 
278. “The beautiful hypothesis by which 
Dr. Gall, in the exposition of his doctrine, thinks 
to secure the freedom of man, falls of itself; for, 
- as soon as he shows an organ of theft, the being 
in whom he observes it, must be a robber; and 
not only has an assassin the organ of murder, but 
whosoever has on his cranium the organ of 
murder, must be an assassin. If he says that 
one may have the organ of murder without being 
an assassin, I deny this proposition, because no 
organ can exist without its faculty being mani- 
fested ; if he objects that the manifestation of the 
faculty may be arrested by other organs and 
other actions, I say that in this case the organ 
ought also to waste, and that, consequently, the 
organ of murder should be wanting in him who 
in fact is no assassin.” 
279. “It must be confessed that the idea of 
admitting organs without the presence of the 
faculties which they ought to represent, is an 
excellent subterfuge, to escape and to answer all 
the reproaches and all the objections which can 
be made to organology. For, if any one whose 
skull is examined, has the organ of theft, and 
yet is not a robber, it will be said that the organ 
only indicates the disposition, and that the man, 
in not robbing, proves that he has had a good 
education, which has given him the means of 
resisting a violent propensity. If an arrant 
knave has not the organ of theft, the difficulty 
will be got rid of by showing, that respect for 
another’s property has been somewhat set aside 
by the preponderating action of the other organs, 
but that one cannot impute this act to the organ 
of theft, which is entirely wanting.” 
@ 80. ‘Dr. Gall hasa vast field open before 
him; he may traverse it with short-sighted 
people, and set aside their objections with extreme 
facility. But he is overpowered in presence ef 
the true observer of nature, whom he resembles 
only by his mask. He must of necessity confess 
that, if there were organs such as he imagines, 
these organs could not exist without a manifesta- 
tion of the faculties; and that whoever has the 
organ of murder must be an assassin, in the 
same way as whoever never has committed 
murder, cannot have this organ. He must con- 
fess, that such a doctrine, if it could subsist, 
annihilates the freedom of man, and that then 
human society could only be governed by the 
laws of a blind necessity, and not by those of 
reason. But, fortunately, Dr. Gall’s doctrine of 
organs is worth no more than his logic, and his 
observations of nature taken in a mass. It is 
evident, that there are not, and cannot be any 
organs like those which Dr. Gall has invented.” 
ANSWER. 
I have combined these three paragraphs, in 
order to comprehend them in a single answer. 
Why do my adversaries, when they pretend that 
I teach the uncontrollable character of actions, 
always speak of the propensity to theft and the 
propensity to murder? They know, in the first 
place, that by the expression, propensity to mur- 
der, I by no means design an organ which leads 
immediately to homicide, but simply the natural 
propensity to killing other animals, a propensity 
which belongs to every carnivorous animal, and, 
consequently, to man ; they know that it is only 
the degeneration and abuse of this propensity 
which lead to homicide; they know, also, that 
we admit organs of goodness, as well as moral 
and religious sentiments ; why, then, do they not 
say that men are irresistibly led to commit good, 
moral, and religious acts ? 
Professor Ackermann cannot admit what I 
have always publicly professed, and what I have 
now established in this treatise, on the free use 
of innate qualities, because then, his objections 
would reduce themselves to nothing. I am, 
therefore, going to prove to him, by arguments 
drawn from his own principles of physiology, the 
truth of what I have advanced above. Though 
the will has no immediate influence on the vege- 
table or automatic life, or on the organs of this 
life, such as the heart, liver, kidneys—still Pro- 
fessor Ackermann acknowledges, with all physio- 
logists, that animal life, and the action of its 
organs in a state of health, are almost entirely 
subject to the will. Now, as he establishes the 
principle, that there exists an organ of will 
in the brain, it would result from his own 
avowal, not only that all the actions of animal 
life ought to take place necessarily and always, 
but also, that by a singular contradiction, will 
and irresistibility would exist together! 
As Professor Ackermann always continues to 
repeat these same objections, L am obliged to hold 
to the same answers. All his arguments have 
no other basis than this false definition: the 
organ is the true representative of the faculty. 
If the organ and the manifestation of its faculty 
were the same thing, and their co-existence 
were necessary, all the organs of animals and 
of man, those of automatic as well as those of 
animal life, would have to be continually and 
simultaneously in action, or an instant of cessa- 
tion of the action would cause them to disappear. 
Where do we see any example of this in nature ? 
Does a muscle disappear because it is inactive ? 
Ackermann answers, that a muscle in motion 
is quite another muscle from that at rest. It 
would result from this reasoning that the same 
foot, according as it walks or remains immovye- 
able, would be quite a different foot. 
Let us again reason on the other avowals 
which Ackermann makes. He admits the brain 
as the organ of the soul in general; he estab- 
lishes, besides this, some peculiar organs in the 


