Tract (book)

“ Or, to use the simplest possible language, the organs of sense—sight, smell, taste, even hearing—have been alike developed from the skin! Even the human brain itself, by the modern testimony of histology and embryology, "is, at its first beginning, merely an infolding of the epidermic layer;" and thought, physiologically and evolutionally, is thus a modification of touch. ”

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“ The poor girl was never the same in appearance after she left her Virginia home. A deep pall seemed to have been thrown over her spirit, and her hopes and happiness lay buried beneath it. Her disposition had lost its buoyancy, and her face wore a sad, pensive look. She tried to do her duty here as before, and her skill and neatness made her a favorite. But there was no one here to care for her and love her as Mammy Grace had done; and she missed the children sadly. Her hymn-book was neglected ”

“ The organs of sense sending their judgments by the sensory nerves from the exterior, the organ of feeling from the interior, and we are compelled to infer that every particle of matter in the animate body has judgment; and that in the organs of sense they have judgments of cognition, but in the mechanical organs they have judgments of good and evil. ”

“ While its fundamental function is ideation, by reason of the concomitance of properties it becomes a vicarious organ for others.
Every one of the sense organs becomes an organ for and of the faculties. In the first stage of mind, while the organs of taste and smell are primarily the organs of sensation, the other organs interpret the sense impressions coming to them as symbols of flavor. In the second stage, while touch is the primary organ of form, the sense impressions coming to the other organs are interpreted as symbols of form. ”

“ As the work is divided into chapters, the subjects of which are complete in themselves, the pupil may commence the study of the structure, use, and laws of the several parts of which the human system is composed, by selecting such chapters as fancy or utility may dictate, without reference to their present arrangement,—as well commence with the chapter on the digestive organs as on the bones. ”

“ Yet that such an internal feeling exists in every human mind, is evident from experience, and is moreover confirmed by the general application of the term touch to express such feeling,—as may be seen by consulting the best writers in our English language. The organ then of bodily touch, it is plain, is in connection with the higher organs of mental touch, being at once their basis, their support, their monitor, and their representative figure ”

“ Now an organ, that is to say, under the present point of view, the nerve of an external [82] sense, is nothing more than a fascicle of nervous fibres. Therefore the brain, under the theory, can be nothing but a collection of fascicles of fibres. [101]
According to Gall, the origin, the development, the structure and mode of termination, as to the organs of the faculties of the soul and the organs of the external senses, every thing is similar, every thing is in common. ”

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“ According as we count the muscles, the joints,{65} the lungs, the digestive organs as several sense organs or as a single group, the number of classes of sensations is larger or smaller. However, it matters little whether we count them or not. We know that provision is made for everything needed. Information about the most distant things is obtained through the eye; information about the things in contact with the body or the body itself comes through the cutaneous and organic sense organs. ”

“ Hence the importance of giving definite RULES for finding the organs, by which even disbelievers may test the science, and believers be confirmed in its truth, and advanced in its study.
The best mode of investigating its truth, is somewhat as follows: You know a neighbor who has extreme Firmness in character; who is as inflexible as the oak, and as obstinate as the mule. Now, learn the location of the phrenological organ of Firmness, and apply that location to his head—that is, see whether he has this organ as conspicuous as you know him to have this faculty in character ”

“ Every impression made upon the mind by the external world is in some way responded to by movement. The movement may occur in the stimulated sense organ itself, in the arms, the hands, the fingers, the legs, the feet, the head, the vocal organs, also in the internal organs, the heart, the blood vessels, the alimentary canal, the lungs. The significance of many of these movements is but insufficiently understood, for example, laughing, weeping, blushing, trembling. But those movements which directly affect the organism’s surroundings are easily understood. ”

“ Consequently, our psychology leads us into anatomy and physiology, which, probably, we have already fairly mastered. In rapid review, only, in the following chapter we shall consider the organs of man’s consciousness, the brain, spinal cord, and the senses, and try to establish some relation between the material body and its mighty propelling force—the mind. ”

“ Yet these natural and temporal uses of the bodily organ of touch, wonderful and important as they are, admit of no comparison with the spiritual and eternal uses of the same organ, whether viewed as an instrument of producing the sensation of touch, or as a medium of communication between the great world of outward nature and the little world of the human body. ”

“ In accordance with this primitive character of the touch sense, the psychologists tell us that we interpret the information from our more highly developed sense organs, sight particularly, in terms of the feel of objects. When we look at anything our judgment of it actually consists in an idea of how it would feel if we were to take hold of it. Our touch organs consist of tiny spots scattered all over the surface of the body. They are much closer together on some parts than on others. ”

“ To determine this we must make a brief study of the unfolding human life and note some of its component parts and their relative relations and values in the organism.
We can best do this by a study of the accompanying chart. The lower line of the triangle represents the body, or physical life; the left side the feelings; the right side the intellect. If body, feelings and intellect were equal in any human being, then, we would have a perfect triangle, or a normal human life. ”

“ Organs of the Special Senses.—Each of the special senses has a special set of nerves and also special cells in the brain which have charge of them. We say that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, feel with our fingers, etc.; but, really, we see, hear, taste, and smell in the brain just as we feel in the brain. The eyes, ears, nose, and other organs of the special senses are the instruments by means of which the brain sees, hears, smells, etc. ”

“ That the outer world is only for my organs appears inevitable. But what is an organ except so far as it is known? And how can it be known but as itself the state of an organ? If then you are asked to find an organ which is a physical object, you can no more find it than a body which itself is a body. ”

“ These same organs, as they come in contact with exterior objects, are called exterior senses. The faculty inherent in each of the senses whereby is operated the action between the organ and its object is designated by the appellation of the life of the senses, as, for instance, the eye seeing, the ear hearing, &c. In this treble mode of considering the senses, what do we meet with but form and name, ideas and matter? Supposing the organ of seeing to exist, and an object to be seen, there will necessarily result, as an essential consequence, the perception or idea of such a thing. ”

“ Some parts of the head we use for other purposes, as the mouth to eat and speak with, and the nose to smell and breathe with. The part we think with is inside of the skull, safely placed in a little room at the top and back part of the head. Do you remember the name of this organ which fills the hollow place inside of the skull? We learned some time ago that it is called the brain. It is with the brain that we study and remember and reason. So the brain is one of the most important organs in our body, and we must try to learn all we can about it. ”

“ THE VOLUME FOR 1888.
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“ Of such clews—which are really mere traces, and nothing more—there are no better examples than the curious fragments of structures found in many animals and plants, and named "rudimentary organs." An animal or plant is thus found to possess a mere trace of an organ or part which, so far as the highest exercise of human judgment may decide, is of not the slightest utility to the being. ”

“ It does not comport with our present purpose to examine, either anatomically or physiologically, the nature of the senses themselves; we are simply trying to find out what a sensation is when we consider it as one of a group of like judgments forming a concept.
We see that the sensations are abstracted in that every sense organ recognizes a single property and that for every organ there is a fundamental property. Then we see that the sense impression coming into one organ is classified as like or unlike ”

“ The proof that there are material changes in the cell-groups of gray matter which have been educated in language is shown, as we have seen, by the study of injuries to the brains of polyglots who successively acquired several tongues. ”

“ In the language of physiology, consciousness reflects the simultaneous, co-ordinate activities of an immense number of nerve-centres, but reflects them very imperfectly, much as—to employ Ribot's illustration—a map represents the main features of a countryside. ”

“ The brain, then, and the various nerves of sense in continuity with it, may, when taken together, be considered as forming one great organ, which I would term briefly the sensorial organ, essential to life, and to the immediate production of those mental phenomena which constitute our sensations, and, perhaps, too, modifying in some measure, directly or indirectly, all the other phenomena of the mind. ”

“ The question, we see, becomes general; it extends to the general movements in writing, and is concentrated at last in a single point: are there facts which force us to admit a particular cerebral center, on which the movements in writing depend? In other words, does the manner in which we write depend upon a physiological necessity—determined by the structure of the brain? All peoples write with the right hand. ”

“ The origin of articulate language, and the higher differentiation and perfecting of the larynx connected with it, must be looked upon as only a later, and the most important stage in the process of the development of Man. It was, doubtless, this process which above all others helped to create the deep chasm between man and animal, and which also first caused the most important progress in the mental activity and the perfecting of the brain connected with it. ”

“ In the next place, as she is to hold a correspondence with all the material beings around her, she must be supplied with organs fitted to receive the different kinds of impression which [Pg 14] they will make. In fact, therefore, we see that she is provided with the organs of sense, as we call them: the eye is adapted to light; the ear to sound; the nose to smell ”

“ How is consciousness of these sensations brought about? No doubt, in a manner similar to that of the mediation of such sensations as odors and tones: through the stimulation of sensory neurons and the propagation of nervous processes toward the motor points of the body. The place of stimulation must be somewhere in our organs of nutrition, and thus these organs must be regarded also as a kind of sense organ. That the sensory function can be attributed to an organ in addition to another function has been proved by the example of the skin, muscles, and joints. ”

“ Phrenology teaches that the faculties of the mind have, each one, its special organ or place in the brain; and that these organs, in their aggregate, constitute the brain. Therefore the brain is the organ of the mind. ”

“ It seems better to conceive that as new organs developed, — organs of all kinds, sensory and muscular, legs, arms, eyes, ears, tongue, — as the organism as a whole grew, and developed to special forms and functions, each new sense system grew along with and into its appropriate organs, while the old sense did not grow, at least did not grow to anything like the extent that the other special sense systems did. ”