If we thus go through the catalogue of psychic powers or qualities, we observe finally that the organs are grouped as follows; and this grouping should be impressed upon the memory, as it is easily learned, and serves as a basis for the further study of organology. The organs in this drawing are not arranged to show their antagonism, but antagonism is the most important fundamental principle of cerebral psychology.
THE LAW OF ANTAGONISM.
Antagonism or opposition is the universal condition of all that we know. Up suggests down; inward, outward; forward, backward; advance, recession; motion, rest; elevation, degradation; abundance, deficiency; heat, cold; light, darkness; strength, weakness. The same antagonism exists in the psychic nature, as in love, hate; hope, despair; courage, cowardice; pride, humility, etc.; and equally in the physiological, as we see in the action of flexor and extensor muscles, their antagonism being a necessity. If we had only flexor muscles, one motion would exhaust the muscular capacity; when the limb is flexed it can do nothing more; but when the extensor muscle moves it back, flexion can be again performed. Thus all vital voluntary action is a play of opposing forces,—the existence of one force rendering possible the existence of its opposite. The coronal organs, carrying the soul above the body, would bring the end of terrestrial life, and the basilar organs exhausting the brain would bring to a more disastrous end; but the joint action of the two, like that of flexor and extensor muscles, produces the infinite variety of life, which moves on like pendulums, in continual alternation.
Man would be utterly unfit for the sphere that he occupies, if he had not the opposite capacities required by innumerable opposite conditions. Physiologically, he requires calorific powers to fit him for cold climates, and cooling capacities to fit him for the torrid zone. Morally, he requires warlike powers to meet enemies and dangers, as well as affections for the sphere of domestic love. He requires the conscious intellect to call forth and guide his powers in exertion, and a faculty for repose and recuperation in sleep. He requires self respect to sustain him in elevated positions, and humility to fit him for humble duties and positions. We can conceive no faculty which has not its opposite,—no faculty which would not terminate its own operation, like a flexor muscle, if there were no antagonist. Benevolence would exhaust the purse and be unable to give, if Acquisitiveness did not replenish it; and Avarice unrestrained would lose all financial capacity in the sordid stupidity of the miser. Each faculty alone, without its antagonist, carries us to a helpless extreme.
The antagonism of faculties is so self evident a law of nature that if Dr. Gall had pre-arranged a psychic philosophy in his mind, instead of being a simple observer of facts, he might have given a very different aspect to the science. But he arranged no psychic philosophy, and he did not carry his observations far enough to lead him into the law of antagonism, and hence left a rude system, lacking in the symmetry and completeness necessary to give it the position of a complete philosophy.
But while the law of antagonism should control our psychic studies, it is not always convenient to express this antagonism in our nomenclature, or to group the functions of all regions of the brain in such a manner that each group or organ shall exactly correspond to an antagonism in another organ; for in expressing the functions of parts of the brain we are limited by the structure of the English language, and have to make such groups as will be conveniently expressed by familiar English words,—the words of a language that has grown up in a confused manner, and was not organized to express the faculties of sub-divisions of the brain. Hence, for want of a pre-arranged language, with words of accurate definition and exact antagonism, we can only approximate a perfect nomenclature, and must rely more upon description than upon classification and technical terms.
Technicality, however, is to be avoided as far as possible. Anthropology may need, like other new sciences, new terms for its new ideas, but the old words of plain English express all the very important elements of human nature. To the master of anthropology it is easy to take any word expressive of an element of human character or capacity and show from what convolution, what group of convolutions, or what part of a convolution the quality or faculty arises which that word expresses. An evening might be profitably spent with a class of students in tracing English words to their cerebral source.
In expressing the functions of the brain by nomenclature, we are entering upon an illimitable science, and must hold back to keep within the limits of the practicable and useful. The innumerable millions of fibres and ganglion globules in the brain are beyond calculation, and their varieties of function are beyond all descriptive power. Geography does not attempt to describe every square mile of the earth’s surface, nor does astronomy presume to know all the stars. In reference to the brain, psychic students will hereafter send forth ponderous volumes of descriptive detail, for which there is no demand at present. I willingly resign that task to my successors. A description which portrays the general character of an inch of convolution, or of a half inch square of the finer intellectual organs, is sufficiently minute for the purposes of a student. Acting upon these views, the following catalogue of psychic functions has been prepared, which is offered now not for the reader’s study, as the multiplicity of detail would be embarrassing, but merely to give a general conception of the scope of cerebral psychology, and to show how extensive and apparently intricate a system may, by proper explanation of its principles, be made intelligible to all.
