Hence the term Destructiveness has been very properly applied to this organ by Spurzheim. Yet even this term expresses too much for its average daily action, and Violence, Impulsiveness, or Vehemence would come nearer to expressing its ordinary manifestation.
The reader will now perceive that the psychic functions of certain organs can seldom be adequately expressed by one word, and that three words are required to express fully the moderate, the active, and the abnormal manifestations. Fortunately, however, this difficulty of nomenclature applies only to that portion of the brain which tends to the abnormal. Man’s nobler faculties belonging to the upper region of the brain are essentially good and normal. The abnormal difficulty does not come into their description.
Its operation is limited to the region lying around the ears, the basilar region, the tendency of which is to exhaust the spiritual vitality of the brain in ministering to the body. This will be clearly understood when we understand the fundamental law of all cerebral action, the law of direction, or
PATHOGNOMIC LAW.
This law is the grandest generalization of science that was ever conceived. It is the fundamental law of the relations of the two worlds, the psychic and the physical. The spiritual and material worlds unite in man, in whom the eternal spirit is combined with a transitory material body, and the law of their interaction is the law of the universe.
In its application to man, the law is simply this, that all organs of the brain act in accordance with their position,—in accordance with their pathognomic line, or line of action, which is the line of their central fibres, the tendency of which is toward the surface of the brain, where they reach the interior of the cranium. It will be a sufficient approximation to the mathematical truth if for the present we say that the pathognomic line may be indicated by a perpendicular to the surface of the cranium where the organ is located.
When we establish the pathognomic line, we establish a perfect criterion of the organic action, for the action is always in accordance with the line; and this fundamental law gives a key to all psychology, and gives it a geometrical simplicity.
In accordance with this law, the frontal or intellectual organs act toward the front, and maintain our relations with that which is before us. Acting in that manner, they throw out or expend the vital forces, and exhaust the energies which belong to the posterior part of the brain and posterior part of the body. The posterior half of the brain acts in the opposite direction, and thus draws in, acquires, and energizes. The posterior action impels the body to advance, as the anterior portion checks our progress and causes us to yield. Hence if we erect a perpendicular from the ear, we shall find all the energetic impelling faculties behind it, and all that moderates, checks, and enlightens before it. Thus the occipital development makes a powerful, domineering, conquering character, as the frontal makes a passive, unselfish, yielding one.
Hence all organs in proportion to their energy are located nearer to the posterior region of the brain, and in proportion to their delicacy or weakness have a more anterior location.