The Greeks invented the faculty "Psyche" for sensation, and the faculty "Nous" for mind. We are, unhappily, ignorant of the nature of these two faculties: we possess them, but their origin is no more known to us than to the oyster, the sea-nettle, the polypus, worms, or plants. By some inconceivable mechanism, sensitiveness is diffused throughout my body, and thought in my head alone. If the head be cut off, there will remain a very small chance of its solving a problem in geometry. In the meantime, your pineal gland, your fleshly body, in which abides your soul, exists for a long time without alteration, while your separated head is so full of animal spirits that it frequently exhibits motion after its removal from the trunk. It seems as if at this moment it possessed the most lively ideas, resembling the head of Orpheus, which still uttered melodious song, and chanted Eurydice, when cast into the waters of the Hebrus.
If we think no longer, after losing our heads, whence does it happen that the heart beats, and appears to be sensitive after being torn out?
We feel, you say, because all our nerves have their origin in the brain; and in the meantime, if you are trepanned, and a portion of your brain be thrown into the fire, you feel nothing the less. Men who can state the reason of all this are very clever.
SENTENCES (REMARKABLE).
On Natural Liberty.
In several countries, and particularly in France, collections have been made of the juridical murders which tyranny, fanaticism, or even error and weakness, have committed with the sword of justice.
There are sentences of death which whole years of vengeance could scarcely expiate, and which will make all future ages tremble. Such are the sentences given against the natural king of Naples and Sicily, by the tribunal of Charles of Anjou; against John Huss and Jerome of Prague, by priests and monks; and against the king of England, Charles I., by fanatical citizens.
After these enormous crimes, formally committed, come the legal murders committed by indolence, stupidity, and superstition, and these are innumerable. We shall relate some of them in other articles.
In this class we must principally place the trials for witchcraft, and never forget that even in our days, in 1750, the sacerdotal justice of the bishop of Würzburg has condemned as a witch a nun, a girl of quality, to the punishment of fire. I here repeat this circumstance, which I have elsewhere mentioned, that it should not be forgotten. We forget too much and too soon.