where to ride, and I followed the example my guide set me. Nor, to tell the truth, did I at the moment think of anything but my mule, as he moved slowly, step by step, round the yawning abyss, with scarcely three inches to spare on either side. As we proceeded, the path got still narrower, the abyss seemed deeper; and looking down once, between the mule's side and my stirrups, I saw below in the deep hollow a perfect heap of skeletons-mules, that must have tumbled down since the last flood, or their bones would have been washed away. In my horror I forgot the warning of the vaquiano, and, grasping the reins of my mule, tried to turn it away from the edge, which seemed to me as if it must crumble beneath its next step. My imprudence was near being fatal to me, for, turning the head of my mule away from the precipice, it lost its sure footing, stepped aside, and striking the saddle-bags against the rock, it stumbled forward. we did not tumble. The mule planted its fore hoofs on a firm part of the crumbling ledge, and lifted itself up again, just as a small piece of stone, loosened by the effort, fell noiselessly from the path; and, springing from under us, toppled over, and struck long afterwards with a dull, hollow sound into the deep. Yet I need not be ashamed to say that this little incident made me tremble, and I thought the blood became stagnant in my veins. blossoms fade! So we'll choose for OUR emblem a sturdier thing, We will go to the mountain and worship its tree; Then a health to the Cedar-the Evergreen King, Like the Evergreen so shall our Friendship be! The perfume it carries is deeply concealed, Not a breath of rich scent will its branches impart, But how lasting and pure is the odor revealed In the inmost and deepest recess of its heart! It groweth in might and it liveth right long; And the longer it liveth the nobler the tree; Then a health to the Cedar-the true and the strong, Like the Evergreen so shall our Friendship be! It remaineth unseared in the deluge of light, When the flood of the sun-tide is pouring around; And as firmly and bravely it meeteth the night, With the storm-torrent laden, and thundercloud crowned; And so shall all changes that Fortune can bring, Find our spirits unaltered and staunch as the tree; Then a health to the Cedar-the Evergreen King, Like the Evergreen so shall our Friendship be! FLOWERS AND THEIR CHARMS. FLOWERS ARE THE POETRY OF THE VEGETABLE WORLD. The love thereof is exclusively the attribute of man, for it is an instinct bestowed by divine benevolence only on the human race. Man has been defined to be a cooking animal; how much more intellectually might he be designated a flower loving being-the only one in creation that has an eye to admire, a heart to feel, or a mind to expatiate on these gems of floral loveliness! A flower will often attract the attention of an infant that has scarcely learnt to recognise a mother's smile. When March with its winds has past o'er, Where daisies and buttercups grow? When these weedy wonders of our infancy have lost their attraction, The violet blue, the primrose pale, That gems the bank, and scents the vale, court the love of the youth, and woo the adoration of the maiden. These, again, when familiarity has brushed off the dew of novelty with which rarity had bedecked them, are in their turn thrown aside for further floral favorites, which, if not intrinsically more beautiful, are generally less common. Every age, from the dawn of intelligence to the settling of intellect, is who despises all the luxuries of civilised delighted with a flower. The very savage, life, often pauses in his rapid course to pluck the wild flower nature's vegetable carpet. Even when reason, man's faculty divine, is eclipsed, that embroiders The moping idiot, and the madman gay, can nurse his melancholy or feed his fancy, by gazing on, or toying with, some chosen one of Flora's favored children. Flowers are the joy of nature in the spring. They are upon the earth what the stars are in the skies. As the stars are the flowers of heaven, so the flowers are the stars of the earth. They form the language of the heart, the eloquence of the mind. Without the metaphorical intervention of flowers, language would lose its most beautiful expressions; for affection would be deof its most delicate comparisons, and reli prived of its most endearing epithets, love gion of its most touching imagery. idiom of flowers is universal, it is applied to all subjects, by all nations. It imparts beauty without inducing weakness, and embodies passion without offending delicacy. The GOOD-NATURE. IN THIS DULL WORLD, we cheat ourselves and one another of innocent pleasures by the score; through very carelessness and apathy. Courted, day after day, by happy memories, we rudely brush them off with this indiscriminating besom; the stern material present. Invited to help in rendering joyful many a patient heart, we neglect the little word that might have done it, and continually defraud Creation of its share of kindness from us. The child made merrier by your interest in its toy; the old domestic flattered by our seeing him look so well; the poor better helped by your blessing than your pennythough give the penny too; the laborer cheered on in his toil by a timely word of praise; the humble friend encouraged by your frankness; equals made to love you by the expression of your love; and superiors gratified by attention and respect, and looking out to benefit the kindly-how many pleasures here for one hand to gather; how many blessings for any heart to give! Instead of these, what have we rife about the world? frigid compliment-for warmth is vulgar; reserve of tongue-for it is folly to be talkative; composure, never at fault for feelings are dangerous things; gravityfor that looks wise; coolness-for other men are cool; selfishness-for every one is struggling for his own. This is all false, all bad; the slavery chain of custom, riveted by the foolishness of fashion; because there is ever a band of men and women who have nothing to recommend them but externals. Their looks are their dresses, their ranks are their wealth; and, in order to exalt the honor of these, they agree to set a compact seal of silence on the heart, and on the mind, lest the flood of humbler men's affections, or of wiser men's intelligence, should pale their tinsel praise. The warm and the wise too softly acquiesce in this injury done to heartiness; shamed by the effrontery of cold calm fools, and the shallow dignity of an empty presence. Turn the table on them, ye truer gentry, truer nobility, truer royalty of the heart, and of the mind. Speak freely, love warmly, laugh cheerfully, explain frankly, exhort zealously, admire liberally, advise earnestly. Be not ashamed to own you have a heart-it is no crime; and if some cold-blooded simpleton greet your social efforts with a sneer, repay (for you can well afford a richer gift than his whole treasury possesses) with a kind, goodhumored smile. Then will life pass pleasantly, and the world be full of happy faces. THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS Consists in striving to make all who are around us-happy. How easy this! How natural! How truly amiable! KEEPING UP APPEARANCES. HAD PEOPLE but resolution enough to be not absolutely indifferent to, or cynically re gardless of, but less solicitous about what others may think of their concerns-of what a load of trouble might they at once relieve themselves! At least one half of the toil, the anxieties, and the fatigues of life, is occasioned by the struggling to cut a figure in that great oil de bœuf, the eye of the world! It may appear strange, yet is it undeniably true, that the regard we universally pay to other people's eyes, puts us to more trouble and expense than almost anything else. What sums of money are squandered away, whether they can be afforded or not; what trouble, what toil, what fuss, what vexation are submitted to, for no better reason than because our neighbors possess the power of looking at us! As if other people's eyes did not already tax us sufficiently in the way of what is called "keeping up appearances!" Many even double, or treble that tax, in order to exaggerate appearances, and show themselves to the world in an expensive masquerade; till, perhaps, they end by becoming really poor-merely through the pains they take to avoid the imputation of being thought so; or rather through the misplaced ambition of being considered far wealthier than they really are. The keeping up of appearances is laudable enough; but the art of doing so is not understood by every one. For instead of regulating appearances according to a scale which they can consistently and uniformly adhere to, a great many persons set out in life by making appearances far beyond what they can afford, and beyond what they can keep up" at all-at least not without constant effort, pain, or apprehension. Society abounds with such tiptoe people-as they may well enough be described, since they assume the uneasy attitude of walking upon tiptoes, which, though it may do for travelling across a Turkey carpet or hearth-rug, is ill suited for journeying through life, on a road which, though rugless, is, nevertheless, apt to be found rugged, and requires to be trodden firmly if we would keep our footing, EVERY-DAY LIFE. restless as the troubled sea! No sooner do men From morning till night, is the human mind enter the world, than they at once lose their taste for natural and simple pleasures, so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves, what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth and honor? And on they go, as their fathers went before them; till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood. Nature is not to blame for this. We are the offenders, and deserve to be unhappy. PHRENOLOGY FOR THE MILLION, than the other. Hence," say they again, "men for a long time have regarded thought as a property of matter; and those, who teach the resurrection No. XLIII.—PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. of the body are equally convinced of the immor BY F. J. GALL, M.D. (Continued from Page 231.) TO AVOID ALL CONFUSION OF IDEAS, I shall separately of Materialism, of Fatalism, of Moral good and evil, and of Free-will. OF MATERIALISM. tality of matter. In fine," they add, we can gain only a very defective notion of matter, and a purely negative notion of the soul, by representtreating to ourselves a substance deprived of all the faculties of thought and will; while reason can no known properties of matter, and retaining the more attain to the essence of matter than of mind, and, consequently, we cannot reasonably maintain, that extension and other properties are inconsistent with the essence of the soul, nor that the faculty of thinking is incompatible with the essence of the body." By the term materialism, men designate things entirely different. Sometimes, the materialist pretends that there is no other existence than that of matter, and that all the phenomena in the world My doctrine has nothing in common with this are simply the effects of matter. The ancient hypothesis, nor, consequently, with this species of church bestowed the name materialists on those materialism. I have always declared, that I make who taught that matter existed from all eternity, no research into the nature of the soul and the and that, consequently, the Deity had not drawn body, and that I do not wish to explain the essence the world out of nothing. This sort of materialism of any of these faculties. I confine myself to ordinarily leads to the denial of the existence of a phenomena. Now we see that in this world, no Supreme Intelligence, of a God; and then it is con- faculty manifests itself without a material condifounded with atheism. It is not of such mate- tion; all the faculties, even those which we call rialism that my doctrine is accused. If any one can mental, act only by means of matter, and their acbecome an atheist, it is not the man who occupies tions can only be perceived by means of material himself on a large scale with the study of nature; organs. If, then, I am to be called a materialist, because, at every step, he meets phenomena which because I say that all the dispositions are innate, he cannot explain by any of the known laws of and that their exercise depends on material organs, the material world. He perceives not only the it ought to be proved that in so saying I acknowincomprehensible wonders of particular organisa-ledge no other substance than that of matter, and tions, but also the wise connection of the whole. Nothing in the universe is insulated. All worlds have been placed in reciprocal relations; inanimate nature is so with living nature; all living beings are so with each other. Who, then, can mistake a cause of all causes, a supreme law of all laws, an intelligence of all intelligences, an ordainer of all orders-in a word, a God? Another species of materialism is professed by those who maintain that man is not composed of two substances essentially different; that is, of a body and a soul: that all the phenomena which are ordinarily attributed to the soul, are only the results of the combinations and of the forms of matter; or, that the soul is only a fluid of extreme tenuity, diffused through the whole body, which gives to each part its proper life. This second species of materialism includes a doctrine not less erroneous than the other, and thus destroys the belief of the immortality of the soul. Yet its partisans would fain convince us that this consequence is unfounded. "The principles of matter," say they," are in their nature as eternal, as indestructible, as the spiritual substance; these two substances can be annihilated only by an express order of the Deity, and, consequently, there would be nothing absurd or dangerous in thinking that the immortal soul may be material. We ought, on the contrary, still more to admire the Creator, who has united so many qualities to matter, and raised it to the faculty of thought and of will. If," continue these philosophers, "we choose to regard the soul and the body as two substances totally different, we can no more explain the action of one upon the other, than we can comprehend how a material substance can possess thought; so that from the incomprehensibility of the last idea, it does not follow that one doctrine is more true that I reject every other faculty. The observations which follow, will prove how unjust is this inference. I call the material condition which renders the exercise of a faculty possible, an organ. The muscles and the bones are the material conditions of motion, but are not the faculty which causes motion; the total organisation of the eye is the material condition of sight, but is not the faculty of seeing. I call a material condition, which renders the manifestation of a moral quality, or an intellectual faculty possible, an organ of the soul. I say that man in this life, thinks and wills, by means of the brain. But, if it be thence concluded that the being, willing, and thinking, is the brain, or that the brain is the being, willing, and thinking; it is as if one should say, that the muscles are the fsculty of motion; that the organ of sight, and the faculty of seeing, are the same thing. In both cases the faculty is confounded with the organ, and the organ with the faculty. This error is the more unpardonable, as it has been committed and corrected very frequently. St. Thomas answered in this manner, to those who confounded the faculty and the instrument: "Although the mind be not a corporeal faculty, the functions of the mind, such as memory, thought, imagination, cannot take place without the aid of corporeal organs. Hence, when the organs, from any derangement, cannot exert their activity, the functions of the mind are also deranged, and this is what happens in phrensy, asphyxia, &c. Hence, also, it happens, that a fortunate organisation of the human body has always. for its result, distinguished intellectual faculties." In the fourth century, St. Gregory of Nyssus compared the body of man to an instrument of music. "It happens," says he, "to many skilful musicians, not to be able to give proofs of their talent, because their instrument is in a bad state. It is thus that the functions of the soul can duly exercise themselves only when the organs of these functions conform to the order of nature. But these functions cease or are arrested, when the organs cannot subserve the proper motions; for it is a peculiarity of the mind, that its faculties cannot be duly exercised except by healthy organs." In another passage he says, that the soul begins to exist at the same time as the body; that it is present, though it may not manifest itself; just as the form of the future man is contained in the seed; that the soul can only make itself known when the successive development of the corporeal organs permits it. If we do not take into consideration the difference which exists between the organs and the faculties; and if, to be a materialist it is sufficient to declare that the exercise of the intellectual faculties depends on the organisation, who is the writer, ancient or modern, whom we have not the right to charge with materialism? Either we must admit the whole body as the instrument of the moral and intellectual forces, or we must say that the brain is this instrument; or, finally, we must adopt several distinct instruments in the brain. It is to these three propositions that all opinions may be referred. Now it is evident that each of these propositions has, for its result, to make the intellectual qualities and moral faculties depend on material conditions. In the first case, it is the body which we admit as the necessary condition of the exercise of the faculties of the soul. If this were materialism, it is the Deity himself who would be the cause of our error. Is it not God, (says Boerhaave,) who has united the soul so closely to the body, that its facultis are defective when the organisation is defective, and that they are disturbed when the body is diseased? Saturninus derives the differences in the moral and intellectual qualities of man, from the different structure of his organs. All the ancient moralists, Solomon, St. Paul, St. Cyprian, St. Augustin, St. Ambrosius, St. Chrysostome, Eusebius, &c., regard the body as the instrument of the soul, and plainly profess that the soul always governs itself by the state of the body. Philosophers, also, admit with Herder, that all the faculties, even thought, depend on the organisation and the health; and that if man is the most accomplished being of the terrestrial creation, it is because the most perfect organic faculties which we know, act in him by the most perfect instruments of organisation, in which these faculties are inherent. Lavater accuses those who, in this matter, allow nothing to the primitive organisation and formation, of insulting reason, and of defending a system belied in every living being. In fine, from Hippocrates and Galen, physicians and physiologists have all established the same doctrine; and whatever diversity there may be in their opinions, the basis of all is the same. Some make the moral character depend on the organs of automatic life; while others seek for the principle of the passions in the numerous nervous plexuses and ganglia of the chest and abdomen. Others explain the thoughts and desires by deriving them from the liver. But, it is evident that one party, as well as the other, subjects the faculties of the soul to material conditions; and, consequently, were this language sufficient to charge me with materialism, the same charge would apply to all physicians, all philosophers, and all the fathers of the church. Shall we, then, reserve the charge of materialism for those, particularly, who regard the brain as the organ of the soul? This doctrine is not less diffused than that of which we have just spoken. We find it already in the sect of Pytha goras. The physiological physicians, and the philosophers, make everything depend on the brain; at least, the qualities of the mind, attention, memory, imagination, &c. Boerhaave and Van Swieten attribute to the brain, not only the ideas, their combinations, and the judgment; but also the moral character of man, and all his human essence. Some among them maintain that the impressions received, leave traces in the brain; they explain, by these traces, memory, the comparison of ideas, and judgment. Others, with Malebranche, attribute to the firmness and softness, the dryness and moisture of the cerebral fibres, the difference of the faculties and propensities. Haller, Buffon, and Bichat, regard the inequality of the two cerebral hemispheres, as the cause of mental alienation. Here, then, are so many opinions tending to materialism. There are none, not even my adversaries, who are not forced either to admit the brain to be the organ of the soul, or to suppose a very subtle material substance, to serve as a medium of communication between the soul and the body. Such is the case with Professors Ackermann, at Heidelberg, and Walter, at Berlin, whose objections have been repeated by most of my opponents. The first does not confine himself to regarding the brain as the organ of the soul; he also admits an extremely subtle nervous medulla, soft and almost fluid, which converts itself, by degrees, in the cavities of the brain into animal vapor, and which becomes a medium betwen the soul and the nerves of sense. Walter says," ," in the infant, the brain is like pap; in old age it is hard, and in middle life of an intermediate consistence. The brain must have a certain degree of firmness and elasticity, in order that the soul may exhibit itself in its greatest brilliancy, and the man attain his greatest mental perfection. This mode of viewing the subject does not lead to materialism: it has no other object than the reciprocal union of the soul and the body." Thus, there is no writer who does not make the moral and intellectual functions depend on material conditions; and my adversaries, if I were a materialist, would be no less so than myself. Finally, do my opponents think to impute materialism to me, because in place of one organ of the soul I admit several? But is one more or less a materialist by admitting one or several organs? Is the organ immaterial because it is single? Whether the whole body or the whole brain be the sole organ of the soul, the body and the brain belong to matter. The admission of several organs in the brain, makes no difference in that respect. The hand is not less material than the five fingers! It would seem that my adversaries must have felt the want of vigor in their deductions; for, in order to save, at least in appearance, the simplicity of their organ of the soul, they have been obliged to imagine a central point, where the soul might different organs. The voluntary motions, for have its seat, and where it might perceive all ex-instance, are executed by means of the nervous ternal and internal impressions. "The organi- systems of the vertebral column: the functions of sation," says Prof. Ackermann, "though divisible sense are each attached to a different internal and into several organs, yet offers one complete whole external apparatus. in which all the organs depart from one point, and It is true that men are not willing to admit the in which they must all re-unite." But, unhappily, comparison of the voluntary movements and the he is obliged to concede that the anatomy of the functions of the senses with the moral qualities brain does not offer this principal point, where all and intellectual faculties, because these first the nerves of sense unite, which transmit sensa-functions are regarded as material. But, as these tions to the organ of the soul. On the contrary, functions are performed with consciousness, and I have proved in the anatomy of the brain, that in part voluntarily, this would imply that organs, its different parts have their origin in different purely material, have consciousness and will. points, and spread themselves in large nervous This doctrine would approach much nearer to expansions in places equally different. Van materialism than mine. We should even find Swieten and Tiedemann have already remarked ourselves obliged, after the example of a great that a general point of union, where impressions many philosophers, to include among the properof all sorts should arrive at once, would produce ties of manner, memory, intelligence, imagination, only confusion. Yet Professor Ackermann thinks the affections, passions, propensities and inclithat such a union of the divergent nerves would nations. What could prevent these materialists be very possible, by means of an intermediate sub- from going one step further, and allowing to stance in which they should terminate; and as, matter other faculties-as the reason and the will, according to his opinion, this might happen, he which are called, by preference, faculties of the concludes peremptorily that it is so. But to what soul and mind. purpose this point of union? This intermediate, very subtle substance, must occupy a space at least equal to that of the divergent nerves, or it could not possibly come into contact with them; and supposing this point to be as small as an atom, would it, therefore, be any the less material? Supposing that the plurality of organs has no existence in the manner that I shall show it to exist in my second volume, all those who have regarded the whole body, or the brain alone, as the organ of the soul, are not less liable than myself to the charge of having admitted more than one organ of the soul. It is in fact certain, and all anatomists agree, that the total of animal life, and consequently the brain, is double. This organ is composed of two hemispheres, each of which comprehends the same parts. Thus we have all a double organ of the soul; and we should all be materialists, if it were sufficient, in order to be such, to believe in the plurality of organs; and in this manner the Deity himself would have established materialism in an incontestable manner. If I am a materialist because I admit more than a single faculty of the soul, and because I recognise several primitive faculties, I ask if the ordinary division of the faculties of the soul into understanding, will, attention, memory, judgment, imagination, affections and passions, expresses only a single primitive faculty? If it be said that all these faculties are only the modifications of a sole and single faculty, who will prevent me from advancing the same assertion of the faculties which I admit? It is very evident that we remark different properties of the mind and soul in man. It must follow, then, either that the soul is composed of different faculties, or that a single and same soul produces different phenomena by means of different organs. Now, it is infinitely easier to imagine the unity of the soul in the last case than in the first; and, consequently, materialism is no longer a bugbear which ought to deter any one from my doctrine any more than from others. Analogy, again, comes in support of this last proposition. Every one allows that several wholly different functions, which we feel obliged to attribute to the soul, take place in us by means of The case is very different in my manner of viewing the subject, and my doctrine is not open to any of these objections. There exists, according to my view, only one single principle, which sees, feels, tastes, hears, and touches, which thinks and wills. But, in order that this principle may gain a consciousness of light and sound; that it may feel, taste, and touch; that it may manifest its different kinds of thoughts and propensities, it which the exercise of all these faculties would be has need of different material instruments, without impossible. It results, then, from this discussion, that those who charge me with materialism, because I regard material conditions as indispensable to the exercise of the faculties of the soul, confound these faculties with the instruments by means of which they act. It also results that, the brain being double, anatomists are forced to admit the plurality of these material conditions: it finally results that the profoundest writers of all ages have subjected the exercise of the faculties of the soul and mind to material organs; and that, consequently, if this truth establishes materialism, we must make this charge against all the physicians and philosophers that ever flourished, and even against the fathers of the church and the apostles. PRIDE. A proud man is a fool in fermentation; swelling and boiling like a porridge pot. He sets his feathers like an owl, to swell and seem bigger than he is. He is troubled with an inflammation of self-conceit, that renders him the man of pasteboard, and a true buckram knight. He has given himself sympathetic love powder, that works upon him to dotage, and transforms himself into his own mistress-making most passionate court to his own dear perfections, and worshipping his own image. All the upper storeys are crammed with masses of spongy substances, occupying much space; as feathers and cotton will stuff cushions better than things of more compactness and proportion. |