trongly recommend to the public. It is written with great modefty, entirely without pretenfions, and abounds with curious and important information. Mr Percival will accept our beft thanks for the amufement he has afforded us. When we can praise with fuch justice, we are always happy to do it; and regret that the rigid and independent honefty which we have made the very bafis of our literary undertaking, fhould fo frequently compel us to speak of the authors who come before us, in a style fo different from that in which we have vindicated the merits of Mr Percival.

ART. XV. Leitre de Charles Villers à Georges Cuvier, de l'Inflitut National de France, &c. A Letter from Charles Villers to Georges Cuvier, Member of the National Inftitute of France, on a New Theory of the Brain, as the immediate organ of the intellectual and moral faculties; by Dr Gall of Vienna. Metz. 1802.

OF

Dr Gall, and his fkulls, who has not heard? Of his fyftem, we till now have known little more, than that it terrified the ftout hearts of an Emperor and Council, whom many years of unfuccefsful war had not been able to difmay. An edict was accordingly iffued, to avert the peril of prelections fo dangerous; and, perhaps, that the contagion might be les rapidly and lefs extenfively fpread, Dr Gall was permitted to make converts, only of foreigners. To all this care, we make no doubt, the Emperor was led, by a holy regard for the virtues and piety of his fubjects, when alive, and perhaps by fome love of fupererogation, for their fouls, even after they had ceafed to be his fubjects. But why his regard took fuch violent alarm, we own, we do not fees fince, if the tendency of the theory to Materialifm be all which was dreaded, it feems to have nɔ nore tendency to it, than any other theory of the brain, which has been taught for ages, without the leaft fear of the penalties of royal edicts. There are two opinions only, which can, in this refpect, be contrafted; that, which alerts perception to take place, by the intervention of a material organ; and that, which afferts it to take place immediately, by the energies of the mind felf, or, at leaft, without the intervention of any material organ. Undoubtedly the latter opinion has lefs tendency to produce materialifin; because it denies the exiftence of matter at all: but it is a fceptical fpiritualifin, which, in that Catholic church, of which the Emperor and his Council are fuch ftrenuous defenders of the faith, would certainly be claffad, for reprobation, ataong the multitude of falle doctrines,

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herefies,

herefies, and fchifms. As we cannot have recourse, therefore, to this pure immaterialism, there remains the dangerous, but fole, alternative, which afferts the neceflity of a material organ; and, if this alternative be adopted, any modification of it, which does not exclude mind as the ultimate percipient, must have an equal tendency to materialifm. The whole brain may be one undivided organ, or a part of the brain may be the organ, or different parts may be organs of different functions. In all thefe cafes, the materialism, or immaterialism, is the same; because, alike in all, fome affection of the material part is an indifpenfable prerequifite to the mental affection. His Imperial Majefty has had of late too many good opportunities of knowing, that a man cannot continue to march, and load, and fire, when he has left his head behind him; and the redoubtable lecturer of Vienna has faid little more. The immaterialist believes, that it is the foul which fees, and the foul which hears, as much as that it is the foul which judges, and the foul which imagines; and, fince he does not cordemn, as impious, the allotment of different organs of fight and hearing, what greater herefy is there, in the allotment of different parts of the fenforium, as the organs of judgment and imagination? If, indeed, any one fhould fay, that the affections of these parts are themselves judgment and imagination, he would be a materialift; but he would be as much a materialist, if he fhould fay, that the affections of the organs of fight and hearing are themselves the ideas of colour and found. To have been confiftent, in its providence, or its perfecution, the fame edict, which hut up the mouth and the lecture-room of Dr Gall, fhould have prohibited all medicine, and made the reading of poetry a deadly fin. What intoxication is there, in the praifes of wine, and what poifon, in the whole doctrine of narcotics.! It may be wrong, to allow a daring demonftrator of proceffes and finuofities, to affert that the mind remembers, imagines, and judges, only by the intervention of certain parts of the brain; but it is a piece of forbearance at least as dangerous, to allow a fingle cellar to be open, in the taverns of Vienna, or memory, imagination, and judgment, to be all fet to fleep, by a few grains of a very common and fimple drug.

We are too fincere believers in the truth of immaterialifm, to be eafily alarmed by the fpeculations of any theorist; and therefore, confidering Dr Gall as more ftrictly under the cognizance of a court like our own, than of that of any civil magiftrate, we are pleafed at the opportunity, which this pamphlet gives us, of confidering the merits or demerits of his doctrine. As yet, we believe, no detailed account of his supposed disco

veries has been published by himself; though, as far back as the year 1798, in the Deutsche Merkur of Wieland, he announced his intention of publishing a large work on the subject. The account, at prefent before us, is only a very flight sketch by a metaphyfical artift, of whofe labours we have before had an opportunity of making honourable mention, in our review of his Expofition of the Transcendental Philosophy, and whose admiration of the authors of the right bank is by no means diminished. M. Villers may indeed be fairly confidered as the fcientific ferryman of the Rhine, which before was almost a Lethe to the fages of Germany. Whether he may not fometimes carry over the ghofts of the dead, or at leaft the fickly bodies of the dying, may perhaps be reasonably doubted. But certainly Dr Gall, in fpite of the thunders of the court of Vienna, is not quite dead; or, though not a Hercules or a Thefeus, his ghoft is a ghost of vigour.

The letter, which is written to Cuvier from Germany, contains feveral pieces of information, not connected with its chief fubject. There is particularly an account of wonderful success in the medical application of Galvanifm, of the full truth of which we greatly doubt. An apothecary, of the name of Sprenger, in the little town of Iever, is faid, by the application of it, to have given hearing, and in confequence speech, to eleven perfons who had been dumb from infancy. The letter is on the whole written in a very lively and pleasant manner, and is not the less amufing, from the occafional recurrence of a few tranfcendental flights. Thus we are carefully reminded of the merits of Kant, in his endeavour to cure us of our obftinate belief, (opiniátreté) that there exifts either matter, or mind, or both, by the pains which he has taken to annihilate all corporeal and incorporeal fubftances, as real exiftences, p. 17: and, a page or two before, we are amufed with one of thofe fanciful but falfe conceits, with which we were occafionally treated, in the View of the Critical Philofophy:

The nervous fyftem of man, that phyfical inftrument of his moral life, is like the connected branches of a tree, of which the trunk is the medulla oblongata and fpinal marrow, and the brain the earth in which its roots arile, an earth which is rich with the quinteffence of life, and which, denfe as it appears, feems to be nothing more than a concentrated ether. Unlike terreftrial vegetations, this precious tree of moral life has its roots towards heaven, and draws its nourishment from on high, thus conftantly recalling to man, by its fingular oppofition to the general laws of growth, that his deftination is more elevated than that of other beings.' P. 15.

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Inftead of fupporting this noble truth of religion, the image, if it could with juftice be adduced to prove any thing, might rather be alleged in fupport of the oppofite doctrine, in a manner p culiarly degrading to man. The terreftrial vegetations all rife upward, as if afpiring to a higher fate; while the precious tree of moral life fends its branches downward to the earth, as if confcious that there it is to rest for ever. It is fortunate for us, whatever it may be for a rhetorician, that the immortality of the foul is fomething more than a metaphor.

M. Villers had no opportunity of attending the lectures of Dr Gall; but he has in his poffeflion a fkull, prepared and numbered under the inspection of the theorift himself, and he received the fubftance of the lectures from a friend, who had the best means of obtaining it correctly. It is not, as profefling to adept and defend the fyftem of Gall, that he has been led to give this view of it. He wishes to be confidered, fimply as an hiftorian, and delivers, as an ingenious conjecture, what appars to him to be ingenious at leaft, though it may be nothing

more.

The brain, according to Gall, is alike the immediate feat of all the powers of life, whether ftrictly vital, mortal, or intellectual; and, each power having its feat in a peculiar portion of the brain, the degree of general power, in each individual, is in exact proportion to the quantity of the whole brain; and the degree of each power is in exact proportion to the quantity of that particular part of the brain, in which the function is exercif d. The brain, being complete, before the offification of the cranium, muft give it a peculiarity of figure, according to the larg nets or fmalinefs of its own parts; and therefore, if the pofition of the feat of each faculty were known, the depreffions, or prominences, of the skull might be taken, as indicative of the degree, in which the different powers were poffefled by the owner of the fkull. To difcover the exact topography of the faculties, the only mode is to collect the fkulls of thole who have been corfpicucus for any particular quality, and determine the parts of the fkull, which have been rendered prominent by the expanfions of brain on which the bone was fpread. This, Dr Gall, to the great terror of every one in Vienna who believed him telf eminent, and confequently to the terror of a very large part of the population, has contrived in a great measure to effectuate, and, not content with human subjees, he has called in the aid of comparative anatomy, in the fkulls of different animals. By thefe means he has been enabled to draw a map of the powers and affections of the mind; and, for the credit of his kill, or his confidence, or both, we mult

do

do him the juftice to say, that it is a map, as fully laid down, and with as little terra incognita in it, as any map of the world, which, after all the tedious and dangerous expeditions of our travellers and navigators, Major Rennel himself could venture

to fubmit to our view.

That the general ftrength of the vital, moral, and intellectual powers, is great, in each individual, in proportion to the quantity of the encephalon, is an affertion, to which the experience of every one must have furnished him with a reply. We confefs, though at the risk of having the periphery of our heads diminished, in the imagination of our readers, that our experience is completely against the affertion. We have known a large cranium, with very great dulnefs of the intellectual, and moral, and even the vital powers; and in the skulls of many of our friends, we have known all these powers condensed in a ímall compafs, like that concentrated ether, of which M. Villers fpeaks.

To the introduction of comparative anatomy, with any weight of evidence, in a question of this kind, we strongly object. If any fact be certain, of the nervous fyftem, it is, that the different parts of the encephalon and its great appendage are, in the different claffes of animals, of very different degrees of importance to the exercife of the powers of life. When, after the amputation of that part, in which, according to Dr Gall, the whole powers of life are included, birds can still perform many of the most important motions, and infects continue to live and procreate, and the cold-blooded animals feem for a while to exercife almost every faculty, which they before were known to poffefs, we cannot allow, in circumftances fo different, any great degree of force to obfervations, which proceed on the faith of complete fimilarity.

The arguments, adduced in fupport of the feparate localities of thought, are not every convincing. The fenfe of relief, from a change of fubject, after long study, is urged as a proof, that the part employed is different. But does not this argument almoft beg the question? at least, does it not make too great ufe of the fenfe of mufcular fatigue, which can be applied, only by a very loofe analogy, to the brain? It is evident, that the brain, if it have any laws fimilar to thofe of mufcular motion, has a much greater number peculiar to itfelf: and by what obfervation has it been fhewn, that the peculiar affection of the brain, which we call only by analogy, the fenfe of fatigue, may not wholly give place to a different feries of affections of the fame part? Even if the queflion were to be decided by analogies, thofe, which juftify this opinion, are

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