Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887: Volume 1, Number 11
History
Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887: Volume 1, Number 11
Medicine -- Periodicals; Phrenology -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
After many years of experimental investigation, I have long since
fully demonstrated that the human constitution is developed in
accordance with the universal plan of animal life, and the human brain
is organized functionally in accordance with those higher laws of
life, which control all the relations of the spiritual and material
worlds,--all interaction between mind and matter. These primal laws
are easily comprehended, and their application to the brain removes
all the perplexing complexity of organology.
Their application to the brain may be stated as follows: The upper
legions of the brain, pointing upwards, relate to that which is
above,--to the spiritual realm, to love, religion, duty, hope,
firmness, and all that lifts us to a higher life. The lower regions
point downwards, and expend their energy upon the body, rousing the
heart and all the muscles and viscera, developing the excitements,
passions, and appetites.
The maximum upward tendency is at the middle of the superior region,
and the maximum downward tendency at the middle of the basilar region,
while organs half-way between them are neutral between these opposite
tendencies. Hence every faculty or impulse has a location in the
brain, higher or lower, as it has a more spiritual or material
tendency, and as its influence on the character inclines to virtue or
vice. The better the faculty, the higher its location,--the more
capable of evil results, the lower it is placed. The higher position
given to the nobler faculties accords with their right to rule the
inferior nature, the predominance of which is evidently abnormal, and
the effects of which, in this abnormal predominance, are expressed by
terms full of evil, although their functions in due subordination are
useful and absolutely necessary.
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