Phrenology Examined

by P. Flourens

But I leave Helvetius and Condillac, and I return to Descartes, to Willis, to Lapeyronie, to Haller, Sœmmerring, Cuvier, &c. They all perceived and all asserted that the brain is the seat of the soul, and that it is so to the exclusion of the senses. Therefore, the proposition that the brain is the exclusive seat of the soul is not a new proposition, and hence does not originate with Gall. It belonged to science before it appeared in his Doctrine. The merit of Gall, and it is by no means a slender merit, consists in his having understood better than any of his predecessors the whole of its importance, and in having devoted himself to its demonstration. It existed in science before Gall appeared—it may be said to reign there ever since his appearance. Taking each particular sense, he excluded them all, one after another, from all immediate participation in the functions of the understanding.[18] Far from being developed in the direct ratio of the intellection, most of them are developed in an inverse ratio. Taste and smell are more developed in the quadruped than in man. Sight and hearing are more so in the bird than in the quadruped. The brain alone is in all classes developed in the ratio of the understanding. The loss of a sense does not lead to the loss of the intelligence. The understanding survives the loss of sight and hearing. It might survive the loss of all the senses. To interrupt the communication between the sense and the brain, is enough to insure the loss of the sense. The mere compression of the brain, which abolishes the intellection, abolishes all the senses. Far, therefore, from being organs of the intelligence, the organs of the senses are not even organs of the senses, they do not even exercise their functions as organs of the senses, except through the medium of the intelligence, and this intelligence resides only in the brain.

The brain alone, therefore, is the organ of the soul;—is it the whole brain—the brain taken en masse? Gall thought so, and Spurzheim followed Gall’s opinion; and all the phrenologists who have come after them have followed the examples of Gall and Spurzheim.

Yet, after all, it amounts to nothing. If we deprive an animal of its cerebellum, it loses only its locomotive action. If we deprive it of its tubercula quadrigemina, it loses its sight only; if we destroy its medulla oblongata, it loses its respiratory movements, and in consequence thereof, its life.[19] Neither of these parts, therefore, that is to say, the cerebellum, the tubercula quadrigemina, and the medulla oblongata, is the organ of the understanding.

The brain, properly so called, is so, and it alone. If we remove from an animal the brain, properly so called, or the hemispheres, it immediately loses its understanding, and loses nothing but its understanding.[20]

The brain, en masse, the encephalon, is then a multiple organ; and this multiple organ consists of four particular organs: the cerebellum, the seat of the principle that regulates the movements of locomotion; the tubercula quadrigemina, seats of the principle that regulates the sense of sight; the medulla oblongata, in which resides the principle that determines the respiratory motions; and the brain proper, the seat, and the exclusive seat of the intelligence.[21]

Therefore, when the phrenologists promiscuously place the intellectual and moral faculties in the brain, considered en masse, they deceive themselves. Neither the cerebellum, the quadrigeminal tubercles, nor the medulla oblongata can be regarded as seats of these faculties. All these faculties dwell solely in the brain, properly so called, or the hemispheres.

The question as to the precise seat of the intelligence, has undergone a great change since the time of Gall. Gall believed that the intelligence was seated indifferently in the whole encephalon, and it has been proved that it resides only in the hemispheres.

Further, it is not the encephalon taken en masse that is developed in the ratio of the intelligence of the creature, but the hemispheres. The mammifera are the animals most highly endowed with intelligence; they have, other things being equal, the most voluminous hemispheres. Birds are the animals most highly endowed with power of motion; their cerebellum is, other things being equal, the largest. Reptiles are the most torpid and apathetic of animals; they have the smallest brain, &c.

Every thing concurs then to prove, that the encephalon, in mass, is a multiple organ with multiple functions, consisting of different parts, of which some are destined to subserve the locomotive motions, others the motions of the respiration, &c., while one single one, the brain proper, is designed for the purposes of the intellection.

This being conceded, it is evident that the entire brain cannot be divided, as the phrenologists divide it, into a number of small organs, each of which is the seat of a distinct intellectual faculty; for the entire brain does not serve the purposes of what is called the intelligence. The hemispheres alone are the seats of the intellectual power; and consequently, the question as to whether the organ, the seat of the intelligence may be divided into several distinct organs, is a question relative solely to the uses and powers of the hemispheres.