pear; for the general organ being able to manifest one faculty, ought, according to the circumstances in which the individual is placed, to be equally able to manifest all others, whose activity may be required, and thus the character of the idiocy ought to change with every passing event, which it never does. FODERE' calls these "inexplicable singularities," and, no doubt, on his theory they truly are so. To the Phrenologist, however, they offer no difficulty, for they are in perfect harmony with his views. The difference in the kind of powers manifested in cases of partial idiocy, between the capacity for mechanics, for instance, and the sentiment of Veneration, Self-esteem, or Benevolence, is as great as between the sensations excited by the perception of a sound, a taste, or a smell. To infer, therefore, that one organ serves for the manifestation of all these faculties, is really much the same in point of logic as if we were to suppose all the external senses to communicate with the mind through the medium of only one nerve, in spite of the facts of many individuals being blind who are not deaf, or deaf and still able to see and smell.

Partial insanity, or that state in which one or more faculties of the mind are diseased, without affecting the integrity of the remainder, is known by the name of Monomania, and appears equally with the former to exclude the possibility of one organ executing the functions of all the mental faculties; for the argument constantly recurs, that if the organ be sufficiently sound to manifest one faculty in its perfect state, it ought to be equally capable of manifesting all,—which, however, is known to be in direct opposition to fact. On this subject, I shall confine myself to the statement of a very few instances, merely in illustration.

Of folie raisonnante PINEL thus speaks:-" Hospitals for the insane are never without some example of mania marked by acts of extravagance, or even of fury, with a kind of judgment preserved in all its integrity, if we judge of it by the conversation; the lunatic gives the most just and preeise answers to the questions of the curious; no incohe

rence of ideas is discernible; he reads and writes letters as if his understanding were perfectly sound; and yet, by a singular contrast, he tears in pieces his clothes and bedcovers, and always finds some plausible reason to justify his wandering and his fury. This sort of mania is so far from rare, that the vulgar name of folie raisonnante has been given to it."-P. 93. Another equally interesting case from the same author may be cited. "It is difficult to conceive," says he, "the nature of one species of alienation of mind. It consists, as it were, of a combination of reason and extravagance, of discernment and actual delirium, which appear so inconsistent as reciprocally to exclude each other." "One lunatic," he continues, "whose malady is of seven years' standing, is perfectly aware of his state, and forms as sound a judgment of it as if it were a thing which did not immediately concern himself. He tries to make efforts to free himself from it; but, on the other hand, he is convinced that it is incurable. If any one remarks the incoherence in his ideas in his talking, he readily acknowledges it, but answers, that this inclination overpowers him so much, that he cannot but submit. He adds, that he does not guarantee the soundness of the judgments which he forms, but that it is not in his power to rectify them. He believes, for example, that if he wiped his nose, that organ would remain in his handkerchief; that if he shaved himself, he must of necessity cut his throat, and that, at the first attempt to walk, his legs would break like glass. He sometimes subjects himself to rigorous abstinence for several days, under the impression, that if he took aliments, they would suffocate him. What are we to think of an aberration of intellect so regular and so singular ?"-P. 94.

It would be easy for me to multiply such instances as these of the partial affection of the mental faculties, but it is needless to occupy time with more, and the above are amply sufficient to show the nature and bearing of such cases. Here again the difficulty recurs of reconciling such

facts with the idea of one organ executing all the functions of the mind. How comes that organ to be able to manifest one, but not all the faculties?

6thly, Besides the phenomena of idiocy and insanity, there is also another class of facts (to which, however, I shall only allude) equally at variance with the supposition of a single organ of mind, viz. partial injuries of the brain, which are said to have occurred without injury to the mental faculties. I merely observe, that if every part of the brain is concerned in every mental act, it appears strange that all the processes of thought should be manifested with equal success, when a great part of the brain is injured or destroyed, as when its whole structure is sound and entire. If the fact were really as here stated, the brain would form an exception to the general laws of organic structure; for although a part of the lungs may be sufficient to maintain respiration, or a part of the stomach to execute digestion, in such a way as to support life, there is no instance in which these functions have been as successfully performed by impaired organs as they would have been by lungs and a stomach in their natural state of health and activity. The Phrenologists are reduced to no such strait to reconcile the occurrence of such cases with their system; for as soon as the principle of a plurality of organs is acknowledged, they admit of an easy and satisfactory explanation.

From the preceding considerations, then, it appears that any theory, founded upon the notion of a single organ, is uniformly at variance with all that is ascertained to be fact in the philosophy of mind: and that, on the other hand, the principle of a plurality of organs, while it satisfactorily explains most of these facts, is consistent with all of them. Its truth is thus almost demonstrated, not by farfetched or pretended facts, which few can verify, but by facts which daily "obtrude themselves upon the notice of the senses." This principle, indeed, bears on the face of it so much greater a degree of probability than the opposite one, as to have long since forced itself on the minds of

many inquirers. FODERE' himself a very zealous opponent of Phrenology, after recapitulating a great many reasons similar to those already mentioned, which had been employed by philosophers antecedent to Drs GALL and SPURZHEIM, for believing in a plurality of mental organs, is constrained to admit, that "this kind of reasoning has been employed by the greater number of anatomists, who, from the time of GALEN, down to those of our own day, and even by the great HALLER, who experienced a necessity for assigning a function to each department of the brain. PINEL also (in the article Manie in the Encyclopedie Methodique) after relating some cases of partial insanity, asks, whether all this collection of facts can be reconciled with the opinion of a single faculty and a single organ of the understanding?" Farther, the Edinburgh Reviewer, also already referred to, commends Mr CHARLES BELL for "attacking the common opinion, that a separate sensation and volition are conveyed by the same nerves, and for asserting the different functions of different parts of the cerebrum and cerebellum.'

These considerations early impressed reflecting men with the conviction, that particular mental powers must be connected with particular parts of the brain; and accordingly, before the eighteenth century, when modern metaphysics sprung up, we find traces of this opinion common, not only among eminent anatomists and physiologists, but among authors on human nature in general. BURTON, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, says, "Inner senses are three in number, so called, because they be within the brain-pan, as common sense, phantasie, and memory:" of common sense, "the fore part of the brain is his organ or seat;" of phantasie or imagination, which some call æstimative or cogitative, his "organ is the middle cell of the brain;" and of memory, "his seat and organ, the back part of the brain." This was the account of the faculties given by ARISTOTLE, and repeated, with little variation, by the writers of the middle ages. In the thirteenth century, a head divided in

to regions, according to these opinions, was designed by ALBERT the Great, bishop of Ratisbon; and another was published by PETRUS MONTAGNANA, in 1491. One published at Venice, in 1562, by LUDOVICO DOLCI, a Venetian, in a work upon strengthening and preserving the memory, is here represented :-

REFERENCES TO FIGURE.

1 Fantasia.

2 Cogitativa.

3 Vermis.

4 Sensus Communis.

5 Imagina.

6 Estimativa.

7 Memorativa.

8 Olfactus.

9 Gustus.

In the British Museum is a chart of the universe and the elements of all sciences, in which a large head so delineated is conspicuous. It was published at Rome so late as 1632 *.

If, then, the majority of anatomists, for the last two thousand years, and such illustrious physiologists as HALLER, and the others above referred to, were led to the belief of a plurality of mental organs, by a perception of the contradiction and inconsistency existing between the phenomena, and the supposition of the whole brain being the single organ of mind, I cannot be far wrong in saying, that the latter notion, so far from being self-evident, appears so improbable as to require even stronger facts to prove it than the opposite view; and that the presumptions are all in favour of a plurality of mental faculties, manifesting themselves by means of a plurality of organs.

I have now endeavoured to shew, first, That the ridicule ELLIOTSON's Blumenbach, p. 205.