GALL 



71 



genital disease, the deductive fallacy ; but there 

 was a time when it might have been turned to the 

 service of science. 



The excitement that Gall aroused by the spread 

 of his ideas shows that some belief in cerebral centres 

 was waiting for development. All men are by 

 nature phrenologists ; the commonplace excuses 

 that are offered for lapses of memory, venial 

 offences, and inherited weaknesses, all appeal to 

 the comfortable notion that the offender is not 

 wholly perverted, and that some very small and 

 strictly localised group of cells is at fault. And it 

 is probable that the physiology of the central 

 nervous system, with its present strong tendency 

 toward psychology, will some day be back, at a far 

 higher level, above the point where phrenology went 

 wrong. As Mme. de Stael said, U esprit humain 

 fait pr ogres toujours, mats cest pr ogres en spirale. 

 But the question, whether the general desire for a 

 rational system of psychology will ever commend 

 itself to physiology, belongs to the future. All 

 that is of present concern is the steady, continuous, 

 and successful advance, by the way of induction, 

 and by the help of experiments on animals, toward 

 a clear and accurate statement of the departmental 

 work of the brain. 



It is one of many instances how science and 

 practice work together, that the modern study of 

 these centres began not in experiment but in experi- 

 ence. The first centres that were thus studied were 

 the speech-centres ; and the observation of them 

 arose out of the cases recorded by Bouillard in 



