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reflected, it will be decomposed and polarized. So with the mind, in the sense in which that word is generally used.

To me it seems that the provision of two distinct and perfect brains, for this object, is like the provision of two ears and two eyes. In thought, as in vision and in hearing, each organ may suffice to perform perfectly all its appropriate functions, yet the two when in health produce only one result. We have only one sound with both ears, each of them hearing it at the same time. We see only one object with both eyes, each seeing it separately at the same time. We carry on only one train of thought in both brains, each thinking it at the same time; all this however is contingent, not only on the perfect health of the organs, but on their due exercise and cultivation. In disorder or disease, brain, eye, and ear, convey separate, distinct, conflicting ideas,-one, or both, necessarily erroneous.

Ratiocination is so essential to the well-being of the individual, that the possession of two organs for this purpose, each capable of carrying on the function when its fellow is impaired or annihilated, seems only one more of the superabundant examples of design and contrivance in the structure of man, as a provision against accident or disease.

If perfect mind were destroyed by injury of one brain, man would lose, under such circumstances, the guide which makes him a moral agent. Responsibility for his actions could not justly be exacted, when the organ (by the due performance of whose function he was alone enabled to judge of the morality of them) was no longer complete. Without a brain to connect the soul with the material world perfectly, he must be

either a mere animal of instinct, a madman, or an idiot. He could not be a responsible agent.

When one brain wills what is lawful and right, consistent with the duties a man owes to himself and others, and with the form of society existing at the time in the country he lives in, and the other brain suggests a process of ratiocination to justify or palliate some vicious or criminal act, the latter is sometimes attributed to "the instigation of the devil." of the devil." On the approach of insanity, the patient is often found to be holding a conversation, as it may be called, between his two brains, conversing with himself. I do not mean merely talking to himself aloud, but contending with an imaginary opponent,-sometimes uttering his own conscious sentiments, sometimes those of his adversary, sometimes mixing them, or giving them in irregular alternation,--more frequently only his own, which the listener perceives to be answers to some question the patient supposes to have been asked, or some argument he believes to have been proffered by the other. Dr. Johnson represents himself to have been much annoyed in his dreams, by the superior wit of his antagonist. "Had I been awake," says he, “ I should have known that I furnished the wit on both sides."

The ganglionic, or great sympathetic system of little brains in the interior of the body, connected by a network of nerves (like the additional spring to a watch, to enable it to go while winding up), carries on the functions of life during sleep, while the action of of the cerebral organs is suspended. Connected as it is with the real cerebral and spinal nerves, it may, from local disturbance, wake up some of the organs of the

mind, and unequally. In this mysterious state of torpor, and temporary suspension of the faculties, there is no consentaneity between the two cerebra, and they are probably in different stages or degrees of somnolency. If consciousness exist in either of them, it cannot exist in both, unless both were perfectly awake; if in one only, the suggestions of the other must necessarily seem external, and this would account for the double consciousness in sleep. I do but hint at the subject in this place, but expect to throw some light on it hereafter.

The command of one brain over the other (suspended during sleep or dreaming) is what Mr. Barlow means by the expression "man's power over himself to prevent or control insanity." He who is so happily constituted as to possess two cerebra, which are not only well formed and healthy, but which have been duly cultivated by religious, moral, and educational discipline, is a wise and a good man; but he who with one brain constantly furnishing arguments to excuse criminal indulgence, has yet cultivated the power of the other till it can exercise a complete and continuous control over the bad impulses, is a better man. God, who created us such as we are, can alone judge of the absolute degree of merit. It was, no doubt, for wise and just purposes that we were thus formed; had it been otherwise indeed, the whole constitution of nature in this world must have been different.

"O God! (says the Arabian philosopher,) be kind to the wicked; to the good thou hast been already sufficiently kind in making them good."

CHAPTER VI.

PROGRESS OF MY OWN CONVICTIONS-PROOFS THAT ONE CEREBRUM MAY BE DESTROYED, YET THE MIND REMAIN ENTIRE-EXAMPLES FROM CONOLLY, JOHNSON, CRUVEILHIER, ABERCROMBIE, FERRIAR, O'HALLORAN, AND OTHERS-REFLECTIONS-CASE OF CARDINAL, FROM DR. BRIGHT'S WORK—

EARLY REMARKS OF DR. GALL.

It is obvious that a disease of the brain tending to the destruction of one cerebrum; or, according to the present nomenclature, one hemisphere of the cerebrum, can rarely pass to such an extent as to destroy life (when alone we can ascertain the facts) without spreading to the other side, although it might have arrived at a very advanced stage before such extension took place. It is therefore difficult to give examples of the fact; we have, however, on record several such cases, on authority which cannot be questioned.

My own attention to the subject was attracted in the first instance by the case I am about to describe. My knowledge of the brain was at that time exceedingly limited. The theories of Dr. Gall yet slept in his own. sensorium, or, if promulgated, had attracted no notice; war occupied all our attention, our exclusion from the Continent was complete. A narrow-minded and despicable jealousy stifled all mental development in the nations under the iron rule of France, lest it should attract any part of the attention due to the progress of

her dominion, or we might have had the advantage of Dr. Gall's sagacious plan of dissecting the brain before it had been attached to the fantastic theories which have been since pushed to so great an excess by the more enthusiastic of his followers. Had we been able to commence the dissection of the brain on true principles five-and-thirty or forty years ago, unencumbered with his hypothesis of its functions, we should probably have admitted a large portion of his deductions; and some of the quiet, steady, well-cultivated minds of anatomists in this country might have elaborated a system which should have been free from many of the gross non-sequiturs contended for by him and his colleague. This, however, by the way. The case I speak of was as follows. A boy, in climbing a high tree for a rook's nest, missed his footing and fell on the sharp edge of an iron railway, one of the very earliest laid down in this country, and on a different principle from those now in use, the wheel passing in a sort of groove, instead of on the edge of a projection. The side of the iron rail stood up and was exposed to the friction of the outer edge of the wheel, which soon wore it to a sharp edge. The boy fell head downwards on this, it entered about an inch from the falx and sliced off a large portion of brain, with nearly the whole of the parietal bone; much of the brain being torn and ragged, I pared off the projecting fragments and replaced the mass, not having the slightest hope of his recovery, and only occupying myself with the task of laying on plasters and bandages to appease the anxiety of the friends. The quantity of brain lost must have exceeded four ounces, but my recollection of the case is vague after an interval of more than thirty years.

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