Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/607

Rh by the association of mental symptoms with injury or disease of different portions of the brain, and noted that these were very different according to the region affected. His contentions proved to be correct in fact, in interpretation, and in method. In this controversy Gall argued physiologically, not phrenologically. In another controversy the reverse was the case. Flourens restricted his conclusions of the unity of function to the cerebrum, and confirmed the experiments on pigeons which showed that the cerebellum regulated locomotion. Gall had made the cerebellum the organ of amativeness; if it regulated the love-affairs, it could not regulate the gait. He replied first physiologically, that the experiment was defective, and the motor impairment due to concomitant injury of other parts of the brain; and then phrenologically, that if the cerebellum were the organ of locomotion, it would follow that persons with large cerebellums should be acrobats, and asked whether women (who in Gall’s view possessed a small cerebellum) “walked and danced with less regularity, less art, less grace than men.” Controversies of this kind were futile in view of the wholly irreconcilable positions of the advocates. In the end, the phrenological position became an obsession.

At one other point phrenology came in contact with the advances leading to modern psychology; this is in its alliance with the study of hypnotism in the career of James Braid (1795-1860). The remarkable insight of this investigator enabled him to recognize under disadvantageous conditions the true nature of this mental state as a partial disqualification of the nervous system; but it did not prevent his temporary subjection to the phrenological fallacy. He refuted the position that the hypnotic state was a histrionic deception; he demonstrated its reality, but unwittingly brought it within range of suggestion or self-deception. Later he realized the error of his earlier work; but his association with phrenology injured his reputation, and delayed the recognition of his pioneer work in a difficult field. The following suggests the course of the experiments:

This observation seems the very parody of science. It illustrates that prepossession, even in men of shrewd observation and ability, is disastrous to logical integrity; and further that not until the true nature of nervous functioning was established as a fundamental directive position in all psychological considerations, were false leads of this kind entirely discredited.

In view of the fact that the vogue of phrenology in the middle of the nineteenth century represents the largest collective interest in the