We will quote one passage, and that not from among the strongest, referring the reader for further specimens to the book itself::"I went to bed with such a swelling of all the organs that I was dull and, as it were, stupefied. I gently kissed, like a little dog that is beaten, the hand of my Master; and then, as is my custom on every occasion of danger, I looked on that dear Master with a burning gaze of love and trustfulness, and going quite out of my own hateful personality, I reposed in him all my true life, so that I went to sleep in consequence of this practical death, and at once I was no more conscious of myself than I should have been had I died outright. I awoke, however, for a moment in the night, but as I was no better, I took refuge again in my dear Master.

"“I meditated on the meditations of Saint François de Sales on the Song of Songs, at my morning prayer. One night, therefore, while wide awake, I felt myself in suspense in the midst of all my enjoyments, and awaiting, with a sort of terror, what the Lord would say. I saw him most vividly as he is described in the Song of Songs. . . He lay down near me, put his feet on my feet, laid his hands on mine and enlarged his thorny crown, where he pressed his head to mine; then, while giving me a lively sense of the pains of his nails and his thorns, touching my lips with his own, and giving me the divinest kiss of a divine spouse, he breathed into my mouth a delicious breath, which pouring over my whole being a refreshing vigour, rejoiced it all over with an incomparable thrill, and won it for him without reserve.' 1

We need not describe the influence of mutilation on the sentiments in general, on the direction of the mind. In the case of animals, while making them weaker, it makes them also more docile and better suited for use by man. 'It is well known,' says Cabanis, 'that eunuchs are the vilest class of the whole human race they are cowardly and deceitful because they are weak, envious and spiteful because they are unfortunate, yet their mind is conscious of the lack of those impressions which give so much activity to the brain, and which animate it with extraordinary life. Then there are the hermaphrodites. All who have studied them in their moral characteristics, are aware that the individual

1 Ibid. pp. 269-277.

hermaphrodite usually possesses all the psychological tastes which appertain to the predominant sex: thus the masculine hermaphrodite likes tobacco, brandy, and women. Neuter hermaphrodites have been known to engage with equal pleasure in the violent sports of boys, and in the quieter amusements of girls.1

We have now to consider another category of passions, which are not connected in the same way with the organs—namely, ambition, avarice, love of truth; in a word, those sentiments which are called intellectual. These are very complex sentiments, consisting of a number of heterogeneous elements, but in which ideas play the chief part. Yet it is certain that they are accompanied by pleasure or pain, and that these two phenomena, under whatever form, are never entirely separable from the organism. Besides, ideas themselves have their physiological antecedents; they have their condition in a cerebral state, as we shall see on looking at our problem from another point of view.

III.

Every intellectual state has for its condition and antecedent a physiological state.

First, as regards the phenomena of perception, memory, and imagination, the fact is so plain that there is no need for us to dwell upon it.

But when the question is with regard to the higher modes of thought, such as comparison, abstraction, generalization, judgment, reasoning, will, the answer is more difficult. It will be admitted that idiocy, insanity, ecstasy, general paralysis, and delirium always have their cause in a state of the brain. It will further be admitted that the development of the understanding depends on the weight, form, and chemical constitution of the brain, and on the number of its convolutions, though with regard to this point much obscurity still exists. But there is generally much repugnance in admitting that the meditation of a Newton or a Spinoza on abstract truths implies a corresponding cerebral state, and we must

1 Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles, Art. ‘Hermaphrodisme.' On all these questions consult Cabanis, pp. 222, 223, 253 (Peisse's edition); Moreau, 329; Coste, Développement des Corps Organisés, vol. i. pp. 232-239.

confess that physiology is far from being in a position to say precisely to what mode of nerve-vibration a given mode of thought answers. Yet we think that there is one fact which settles the question-that we cannot think without words. To think is to form a judgment; to judge is to abstract or generalize, and these operations cannot be performed without signs. The sign is a kind of image the substitute for an image—and it depends on the brain, as is proved in aphasia, and all disorders of the memory which prevent our using signs. The most abstract reflections, therefore, in so far as they are connected with signs, presuppose a corresponding cerebral state.1

In support of these general considerations, which are based on experience, we may cite, as in the case of the sentiments, some curious facts.

Thus Dr. Dumont, a physician of the Hospital des QuinzeVingts, has inquired into the influence of blindness on the intellectual faculties. Of two hundred and twenty blind persons with whose lives he was perfectly familiar, twenty-seven showed intellectual disorders-not including among these those affected with any appreciable cerebral lesion.

Dr. Renaudin has observed the highly instructive case of an intermittent cutaneous anæsthesia that influenced the character and the intellect of the patient. A youth, Arthur — had always given perfect satisfaction to his parents. Gifted with ordinary understanding, he had begun his elementary studies with some success. Suddenly his faculties lost their energy, and he became so unruly that he was expelled the school. He might have been considered an ordinary bad boy,' says M. Renaudin, 'but as I continued my investigation I found in him a complete insensibility of the skin, and I concluded that this was the pathological explanation of the fact. Nor was I mistaken, Arthur has since been sent to Maréville, and from direct observation I have become still more confirmed in this opinion, because the cutaneous anesthesia being somewhat intermittent, it has been

1 We can think without language, but not without some mode or other of physical expression. The famous Laura Bridgman was always moving her fingers in her dreams and during her waking reflections.-(Maudsley, p. 417.)

easier to appreciate its influence on the mind of the patient; when it ceases, he is docile and affectionate. When it reappears, his evil instincts return, and we have had reason to know that they might have led him even to murder.'

It has been observed that when there is perfect physical similarity between twins, which is not rare, it is always accompanied with moral similarity. Moreau saw at Bicêtre two young men who were so much alike that one would be taken for the other. They both possess the same monomania, the same dominant ideas, the same hallucinations of hearing; they never speak to any one, nor do they communicate with one another. 'An exceedingly curious fact, often observed by the attendants and by myself, is this: from time to time, at irregular intervals of two, three, or more months, without appreciable cause, and by the entirely spontaneous action of their malady, a very marked change occurs in both brothers at the same period; often on the same day they quit their habitual state of stupor and prostration and earnestly entreat the physician to give them their freedom. I have seen this repeated even when the two brothers were separated from one another by a distance of several miles.' 1

The phenomenon of suggestion also, as produced in magnetized subjects, and in the state of catalepsy or hypnotism, supplies decisive facts in support of our proposition. Ordinarily, the ideas, sentiments, and volitions suggest the sign, and are interpreted by it; here, on the contrary, the sign suggests the idea, the sentiment, the volition. The phenomenon is reversed. Thus, by placing the magnetized person on his knees, the thoughts of humility and reverence are suggested; by lifting up his lips and his eyelids in a certain way, he is rendered proud and haughty; by raising his arms into the air, or clasping his hands on some object, he is made to think that he is climbing. Carpenter has collected a number of facts of this kind.

It may therefore be said that experience supplies decisive facts to confirm our proposition, that every psychological phenomenon has a physiological antecedent. It cannot be asserted on sound logical grounds that this is certain. To make it so, the proposition

1 Op. cit., p. 172. See an analogous fact in Trousseau, Clinique Médicale, i. 253.

should either be strictly deduced from some unquestionable biological law, or else it would have to be possible to give experimental proof of it in all possible cases. We can do neither of these things. But we hold that this thesis possesses all the probability that accompanies the inductive process; we hold that were our science sufficiently advanced, we could, the state of the brain being given, thence deduce the corresponding thought or sentiment; and, conversely, the sentiment or thought being given, we could deduce the state of the brain. Leibnitz, whose genius was all-penetrating, had a glimpse of this truth at a period when science scarce allowed a suspicion of its existence. 'All that ambition led Cæsar's mind to do is represented also in his body; there is a certain state of the body which answers even to the most abstract reasonings.'

We might have deduced our proposition from what was before said; for if it be admitted that the physical and the moral differ not objectively but subjectively—not in their nature, but as to the mode in which they are known to us; if vital phenomena are on the one hand specially mental, and on the other specially physical, but yet such that each of them, taken in its totality, is ever both physical and mental; then it is plain that every psychological phenomenon supposes a corresponding physiological state. But we have thought it best to establish this truth directly, and by experience, independently of all hypotheses. We need only add that here; as everywhere, our solution is restricted to phenomena, and has nothing to do with the ultimate reasons of things.

CHAPTER III.

PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEREDITY.

I.

If we sum up what has been said in the two foregoing chapters, we shall see that in consequence of these researches the problem, What is the cause of psychological heredity? is very much simplified.

In the first place, we endeavoured to show that the general