Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887: Volume 1, Number 4
Religion
Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887: Volume 1, Number 4
Medicine -- Periodicals; Phrenology -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Thus do we hold our destiny in our own hands. If we will cultivate the
faculties which are most in need of cultivation, their organs,
receiving more blood, will grow faster than any other portions of the
brain, while the organs that are kept in check and deprived of
activity will gradually decline in power and size, so that the
character will become essentially changed. It is in the power of every
individual who has the necessary determination to change essentially
his own nature for better or worse, as well as to modify and enlarge
his capacities, changing the structure of his brain; and this should
encourage every young man and woman to make for themselves a noble
destiny. Moreover, it is still more practicable to accomplish this by
means of education, with all proper appliances for the young; and this
should encourage philanthropists to struggle for that social
regeneration which is so clearly possible for all the world, as I have
shown in "The New Education." The study of the anatomy of the brain
and the innumerable experiments I have made on the brain, showing how
completely the brain of the impressible can be revolutionized in its
action in a few minutes, make it very apparent that society as a whole
is responsible for the continued existence of criminals, paupers, and
lunatics; for there should not be one, and would not be, if mankind
could be aroused from their criminal apathy and ignorance to the
performance of our duty in education. But alas! "the light shineth in
darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."
The study of the brain continually leads us into grand philanthropic
conceptions by showing the splendid possibilities of humanity,--showing
how near we are to a nobler social state from which we are debarred by
ignorance, by moral apathy, by ignorant self sufficiency, by intolerant
bigotry, and by selfish animality,--qualities which, alas! pervade all
ranks to-day.
But returning from this digression to our study of the interior of the
brain: the great ventricles of which we have considered the position,
and which are called lateral ventricles, are interesting for another
reason, that they are the central region around which the cerebrum is
developed, as it folds over upon itself in its early growth, and
consequently must be borne in mind as its centre when we are studying
its comparative development in different heads. The basilar organs lie
below the ventricles and the coronal organs above.
If we have inserted a finger under the corpus callosum, the fibres of
which are above our finger, we may feel below, the structure which may
be called the bottom of the ventricle, and which is likewise the base
or trunk of the superincumbent parts from which they spring, as a tree
from its stump.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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