Physiological Researches on Life and Death

by Xavier Bichat

Should any farther proof be required of this inequality of distribution with regard to the vital powers, we may find it in the process of nutrition. This process has always an excess of action in some one of the organs, which at such time may be said to live more than the others do. In the fœtus, the brain and the nerves, the inferior members after birth, and at the age of puberty, the genital parts and breast appear to grow at the expense of the others.

From such a variety of considerations, we may establish the following to be a fundamental law of the distribution of the vital powers, namely, that when they increase in one part, they decrease in the rest of the living œconomy, that the sum of them can never be augmented, and that they only transfer themselves successively from one organ to another. By the help of these general data, it is easy to perceive why we cannot at the same time attain to perfection in the various parts of our animal life, why we cannot at the same time excel in all the sciences.

Universality of knowledge in the same individual is a chimera; it is repugnant to the laws of our organization, and if history afford us some few instances of extraordinary men, who have thrown an equal light upon many of the sciences, such instances are but so many exceptions to the common laws of nature; for who are we, that we should venture on the pursuit of many things at once, and hope to attain in all of them a perfection, which for the most part, even when we have but a single object in view, escapes us?

Were we capable of following at once a number of occupations, such occupations would be those which have the greatest analogy among themselves with respect to the organs which they bring into exercise: and by restraining ourselves in this way within a narrow circle, we may, indeed, with a greater degree of facility excel in many parts; but even here the great secret of being superior in any one of them, is that of possessing but a mediocrity in the others.

Let us take, for example, the sciences, which bring into action the functions of the brain. We have seen that these functions relate especially to the memory, which presides over nomenclature; to the imagination, under the empire of which, is poetry; to the attention, which is chiefly excited by the details of calculation; and to the judgment, whose dominion embraces the whole of the sciences of reasoning. Now it is manifest from daily observation, that not one of these different operations of the mind is to be developed but at the expense of the others.

The habits of reciting the beauties of Corneille or Racine, we might naturally suppose would enlarge the mind of the actor; what can be the reason that from such habit he does not acquire an energy of conception beyond that of the vulgar? The reason depends in part, no doubt, upon the natural disposition of the man, but at the same time may be deduced from the greater efforts of memory, and the faculty of imitation, which such a person is obliged to exert: for the purpose of enriching these, the other parts of the brain are in a manner plundered.

Accordingly, when I perceive an individual, desirous at the same time of excelling by address of hand, in the operations of surgery, by depth of judgment in the practice of medicine, by extent of memory in botany, and by force of attention in metaphysical contemplation, methinks I see a physician, who, for healing a disease, for the purpose of expelling, according to the old expression, the morbific humour, at the same time undertakes to augment the whole of the secretions by the simultaneous use of sialagogues, diuretics, sudorifics, emmenagogues, &c. &c.

But would not the slightest acquaintance with the laws of the economy, suffice for hinting to such physician, that one gland pours forth a greater quantity of fluid, only because the others secrete a less? Should he not know that such a variety of medicines can operate in no decided way, and that to exact too much of nature, is frequently the means of obtaining nothing? The same may be asked of the individual who is desirous of simultaneous perfection, both in the bodily and mental exercises, who should pretend to double or triple his relative life, when nature has willed that he should only have the power of detaching from some few of his organs, some few degrees of force, which may be added to one or more of his other organs, and by no means that of increasing the sum of these powers.

Do we wish that any one organ in particular shall attain to perfection, we must condemn the others to inaction. We castrate men to change their voices; it is astonishing that the barbarous idea of depriving them of sight has not been found out also for the purpose of rendering them musicians, since it is well known how acute the sense of hearing is in the blind. The child, who should be destined to music, ceteris paribus, would make a much more rapid progress, were his ears to be assailed by harmonious sounds only, and every thing removed which might be capable of exercising his other senses.

It is a truth, then, that our superiority in such or such an art and science, may almost always be measured by our inferiority in other respects; and that this general maxim which the greater number of the ancient philosophers have insisted on, but which many of our modern ones would willingly overturn, has for its foundation one of the great laws of the animal economy, and will ever be as immutable as the base on which it rests.