*

know not the manner in which the mind acts on its material associate. From so intimate an union, it naturally follows, that every derangement of the corporeal organs would, in some measure, affect the mind; whose irritations and vexations must again, in their turn, obstruct the bodily functions. But from all this we can only conclude with fairness, that the mind exercises itself by the ministration of corporeal organs; not that its faculties are the result of their configuration. "Connexion is not identity*."

Neither would the consentaneous advance and decline of the intellect and organic structure, even should we allow them to be universal, carry us a step further. For, is there any difficulty in supposing, that, without identity, they may be developed together, and that bodily decline should betoken the recession of the spirit? We might as well say, that the body is absent because the child is not the man, as that the spirit is absent, because it exists not at once in plenary perfection. Both cleave the bud and swell gradually to fulness. But it is a pal

pable non sequitur, that because they spring together, the one must be a mode or an effect of the other. This sympathy, however, though generally observable, is by no means so uni.

versal and invariable as it would needs be, were the doctrine of materialism well founded. How often, in fact, do we experience the reverse? How often is the most healthy and vigorous state of body attended with blunted faculties, stationary intellect, or downright stupidity! How often is the puny, sickly, delicate, nervous frame associated with the boldest genius, or the most penetrating judgment? In a great school, the blockhead will be found the bruiser, while the leader and the ornament is often the pallid spectre or the dwindled anatomy. Of the asthmatic Virgil and the blear-eyed Horace, Augustus observed, that he sat betwixt sighs and tears. A link-boy could ridicule Pope as an imperfect work of creation; yet it would probably baffle all the pugilistic champions of England to write but two couplets of the Essay on Man.'

So, likewise, in regard to decline, the anomalies confound the materialist. We see, as in Swift, the body continue vigorous, while the mind, the very soul of wit, sinks into second childishness and mere oblivion. We see, as in Titian, Lord Chatham, Dr. Johnson, West, the body dwindled into the imbecility of old age, and trembling on the verge of the tomb, while the mind remains possessed of all its faculties, in their full freshness and unimpaired vigour.

Neither is it true, in fact, that the relative weight of brain; proportioned to the bodily

bulk, regulates the measure of intelligence. But if this were indeed true, it would not destroy the position that the body is the mere organ of the mind. According to Haller and Cuvier*, the brain in a child six years old, is part of the whole body; in an adult, the brain is part of the whole body; in the ourang-outang, it is in the same proportion as in man; in the American monkey with prehensile tail, it is T and; in the great baboon, ; the mole, ; the fox, ; the field mouse, ; the beaver, the elephant, ; the ox, 7: the horse,; the ass, ; the goose, oi the rook,; the duck, ; the sparrow,

the canary-bird, 4; the tortoise, o. The most transient glance at these proportions, shows that nothing whatever can be made out from them. Some of the animals, whose sagacity and powers of instinct are well known to be of a very superior kind, as the elephant, the horse, the beaver, rank among the lowest in the scale; while others of an inferior class in point of sagacity, as the canary-bird, the mouse, &c. rise very high man, according to this measure, is about equal in reasoning powers to the ourangoutang and the mole, but far inferior to the cock, the field mouse, the American monkey with prehensile tail, and many others to crown

Quarterly Rev. for Aug. 1819, p. 22.

the whole, the child of six years old has higher intellectual powers than the adult man.

If medullary substance thinks and reasons, it will necessarily follow, that all disease of the brain should derange and impede the powers of thought and ratiocination; and that each loss of medullary substance should be attended with a correspondent loss of these powers. The brain is supposed to think and reason, just as any gland secretes its proper fluid; and as that gland being diseased, its function would be deranged, so an injury or partial destruction sustained by the brain, would sensibly and proportionally affect the intellectual powers.

But various important medical facts*, chiefly adduced by Dr. Ferriar of Manchester, show that every part of the brain may receive an injury without the slightest diminution of intelligence. Instances of this kind are on record in large variety †, at once exposing the quack

* Transactions of Philos. Society in Manchester.

+ Dr. Haller mentions a case, in which half a pound of pus was found in the ventricles of the brain, yet the faculties were unimpaired till death. Sir J. Pringle found an abscess in the right hemisphere of the brain as large as an egg, in a patient who had never been delirious, nor altogether insensible. A woman, under Diemerbroerch's immediate inspection, whose skull was fractured by the fall of a large stone, lost a quantity of brain, equal in size to a man's fist, yet she lived thirty-six days after the accident, without alienation of mind, though paralytic on the side opposite the fracture. Peyronie tells us of a boy, six years old, who received a pistol shot in the head;

ery of the craniological theory, and evincing that the medullary substance is no more than the instrument of an interior and a spiritual power; and that, according to an elegant expression of Sir H. Davy's, to look in the matter of the brain or in the nerves for that which thinks

a suppuration followed, during which he lost a great quantity of the brain at every dressing: at the end of eighteen days he died, having retained his faculties to the last. When the head was opened, the portion of brain remaining in the skull did not exceed the size of a small egg. Nor is it only after the destruction of the superior or lateral parts of the brain, that the powers of thought have been known to exist; they have survived the ́injury, and even the destruction of the cerebellum, and of the basis of the brain. Haller mentions several instances of scirrhus affecting the cerebellum, and producing death without previously injuring the faculties. Morgagni gives a particular account of a fatal scirrhus of the cerebellum, slow in its progress, not affecting the patient's sense till the last, and then at intervals. Dr. Brunner records a case of a blacksmith, sixtyfour years of age, a hard drinker, and an industrious workman, who expired in a fit of apoplexy, having passed the morning in apparent good health. On dissection, the whole brain, even the base of it, was found to be in a most diseased state; yet his faculties had never been impaired, and he had been remarkably acute in his judgment. Bonnet, in a patient who died after an illness of twelve years, without suffering any alienation of mind, found the whole substance of the brain watery, and so soft that it would hardly bear the knife. The pineal gland has been so often found suppurated, or petrified, or full of sabulous particles, without any previous affection of the faculties, that it seems by general consent to be given up as unnecessary to thinking.-See Quarterly Rev. Aug. 1819; and Rennell's Answer to Lawrence. ·