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wires to the nerves which emanate from the cerebral organ to supply the 
various structures engaged in articulate language. If the battery be out of 
order, or the telegraph wires be broken, this ‘ lightning language,’ by which 
mind speaks to mind, becomes impossible. Precisely in the same way, a 
certain normal and healthy state of cerebral tissue is necessary for the 
exterior manifestation of our mental faculties, but this is a very different 
thing from saying that the cerebral organ is the £ Seat of the Mind/ and 
that the brain secretes thought, just as the liver secretes bile, whereas it is 
simply the material organ by which our intellectual faculties become 
externally manifested.” 
Also the following from Mr. C. B. Radcliffe, M.D. : — 
“ The paper is not all that I could have desired ; the purely physiological 
part of Dr. Ferrier’s work is the part which I think alone demands atten- 
tion, and this part is not touched upon. I greatly wish the paper had been a 
criticism of the opinion of men like Bain and Herbert Spencer. Dr. ' 
Ferrier simply follows men like these at a humble distance when he 
talks about mind, and he has not a word to say for himself which is in any 
sense original. He believes, as do his masters, that mind is a function of 
brain and other nerve-centres. Dr. Ferrier is an accurate and painstaking 
experimentalist, and highly deserving of praise on this account. He is, in 
my opinion, very one-sided. He may be right in the main in what he 
attempts to prove — that there are centres in the cortex of the brain which rule 
the movements of the tongue in speaking, of the hand in handling, and so 
on ; but I am disposed to agree rather with Drs. Brown-Sequard, Dupuy, 
and others, and think that many of his experiments are fallacious. But 
whether he is right or wrong does not matter. He has no fact which gives 
additional support to the notion that mind and live brain are convertible 
terms, and those who believe in the spontaneity of mind, have nothing to 
fear in what he says and does. To deal with Dr. Ferrier on his own special 
grounds would require a long paper and many diagrams.” 
The discussion, which was of a general character, was taken part in by 
Admiral Fishbourne, C.B., R.N., Mr. J. Enmore Jones, Mr. L. Dibdin, the 
Rev. J. W. Buckley, and Admiral Nolloth, C.B., R.N. The author having 
replied, 
The meeting was then adjourned. 
Since the meeting the following additional communications have been 
received : — 
Dr. Alexander Harvey, Emeritus Professor of Materia Medica in the 
University of Aberdeen, writes as follows to Dr. Fisher : — 
“ I have read your criticism with great satisfaction, and I may say that 
I agree with you in all, or almost all, you say.” 
Mr. J. M. Winn, M.D., writes : — 
“ It may be some satisfaction to those members of the Victoria Institute 
who have not sufficient leisure to study the physiological aspect of Dr. 
Ferrier’s researches, and who may fear that his experiments will tend to 
shake the general belief in the independence of the human mind,: — it may, 
I say, be a relief to such persons to be assured that Dr. Ferrier has utterly 
failed to establish the phrenological doctrine, that the faculties of the mind 
can be localized in the brain. 
u In January, 1877, when I had the honour to deliver an address before a 
meeting of members of the Victoria Institute, on ‘ Materialistic Phy- 
siology/ I, for the second time, challenged the neurologists to show that any 
VOL. XIV. M 
