Part 12

This strange doctrine has had a fortune still more strange. Gall and Spurzheim forgot to place curiosity among their primary faculties. They were wrong. But for the credulous curiosity of mankind, how could they have explained the success of their doctrine?

Fortunately, a system never lives otherwise than as a system lives. That of the moment is abandoned for the sake of another: and almost always for a perfectly opposite one. Systems multiply and pass away; and we are indebted to the systems themselves for an escape from the mischiefs of systems.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

ANATOMICAL RELATIONS SUPPOSED BY GALL TO EXIST BETWEEN THE ORGANS OF THE EXTERNAL SENSES, AND THE ORGANS OF THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES.

Page 82. According to Gall, the origin, the development, the structure and mode of termination, as to the organs of the faculties of the soul and the organs of the external senses, every thing is similar, every thing is in common.

It is known that two substances compose the nervous system—the gray matter, and the white or fibrous matter. Well, according to Gall, one of these substances produces the other. The gray matter produces the white matter.

Wherever, therefore, there happens to be any gray matter, white matter must appear; that is to say, nervous fibres, nervous filaments, nerves. All the nerves in the body must arise in this way. The spinal nerves arise from the gray matter which is in the interior of the spinal marrow; the cerebral nerves from the gray matter that is in the interior of the medulla oblongata.

Hence, the nerves of the body are organs of the senses.

On the other hand, the brain and the cerebellum, which are the organs of the faculties of the soul, must arise like the nerves: the brain from the gray matter of the pyramidal eminences; the cerebellum from the gray matter that surrounds the restiform bodies.

In the second place, whenever a nerve traverses a mass of gray matter, it receives from it, according to Gall, certain new nervous filaments; and in this way it grows and developes itself. The cerebrum and cerebellum will not fail therefore to grow and be developed likewise. The primitive bundles of the cerebellum, (the restiform bodies,) will grow by means of the filaments which will be imparted to them by the gray matter of the ciliary body: the primitive bundles of the cerebrum, (the pyramidal eminences,) by the filaments imparted to them by, first, the gray matter of the pons varolii; secondly, by that of the optic strata; and then by that of the olivary bodies, corpora striata, &c. &c.

Finally, in the same manner as a nerve of sense expands at its termination, and by means of such expansion forms the organ of the sense, so the primitive bundles of fibres of the brain and of the cerebellum terminate in expansions, and constitute the organs of the internal senses; that is to say, the lobes of the cerebellum and the hemispheres of the brain.

NOTE II.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INSTINCT AND UNDERSTANDING.

Page 64 (Note). And he does not see that as to the instincts and the understanding all is contrast.

Here is what I have elsewhere said upon this question, so long debated, of the instinct and understanding of animals.

“There is a most complete difference between instinct and understanding.

“In instinct all is blind, necessary, and invariable. In understanding every thing is elective, conditional, and modifiable.

“The beaver which builds its house, and the bird that constructs its nest, act only by instinct.

“The dog and the horse, that learn even the meaning of several of our words, and who pay obedience to us, do so by understanding.

“In instinct all is innate. The beaver builds without having learned to build: all that he does is from fatality. The beaver builds under the impulsion of a constant and irresistible force.

“In understanding, every thing results from experience and instruction. The dog obeys only because he has learned to obey: he is perfectly free in this respect; for he obeys only because he will obey.

“Finally, in regard to instinct every thing is particular. That admirable industry that the beaver exhibits in the construction of his hut, can be employed in no other occupation than the building of his hut. Now, in understanding every thing is general; for the dog could apply the same flexibility of attention, and of conception, which he uses in obeying, to do any other thing.

“In animals there are, therefore, two distinct and primary forces—instinct and understanding. As long as our conceptions of these forces were confused, all our views and opinions in regard to the actions of animals remained obscure and contradictory. Among these actions, some exhibited man every where superior to the brute; while others appeared to accord to the brute creation the superiority over man—a contradiction almost as deplorable as absurd! By the distinction that separates blind and necessary actions from elective and conditional ones—or, in a word, instinct from intelligence—all contradiction disappears, and order succeeds to confusion. Whatever in animals is understanding, does not in any degree approach the excellence of the human understanding; and whatsoever, under the appearance of understanding, seemed superior to the human understanding, is in fact a mere result of a mechanical and blind force.”

Here is what I say as to the boundaries between the intelligence of man and of animals.

“Animals receive, through their senses, impressions similar to those that we receive through the medium of our senses; like ourselves, they retain the traces of these impressions: these impressions, when preserved, form for them, as well as for us, numerous and various associations: they combine them, they draw from them inferences, and deduce judgments from them: therefore they possess understanding.

“But the whole of their understanding stops at that point. The understanding they possess is not one that can consider itself: it cannot see itself, does not know itself. They do not possess reflection, that supreme faculty with which the mind of man is endowed, and which enables him to turn his intellectual power inwards, so as to study and know the nature of his own understanding.

“Reflection, thus defined, is then the boundary that separates human intelligence from that of the brute creation: and in fact it cannot be denied that this furnishes a strong line of demarcation between them. Thought, which contemplates itself; understanding, which sees itself and studies itself; knowledge, which knows itself; these evidently constitute an order of determinate phenomena of a decided character, and to which no brute animal can ever attain. This is, if one might so speak, a purely intellectual domain; and it appertains to man alone. In one word, animals feel, know, think; but man is the only one of all created beings to whom has been given the power of feeling that he feels, of knowing that he knows, and of thinking that he thinks.”