“There is,” says he, “no central organ. This is considered as one of the most powerful objections to Gall. As far as I know he never answered it. As for me, I shall be more frank, perhaps more bold: I shall say it is impossible that there should be one, &c.”[206] NOTE VI. CONTRACTILITY OF BROUSSAIS. Page 126. _He assigns it to every tissue, and, like them, he explains every thing by means of it._ He assigns it to every tissue. Haller attributed this property to the muscles alone, “but it is a common property of the tissues.”[207] He explains every thing by means of it: every thing, even _innervation_ itself. But he is constrained to add: “Doubtless _something more occurs_ in the interior of the nervous tissue; doubtless we are unacquainted and ignorant as to how _that other thing_ is connected with the motions in question, and how it may employ them in the act of innervation,” &c.[208] So we perceive, in the first place, _contractility_ explains _innervation_; and then, that _something more_ is wanting. And as nervous contractility is nothing but a mental fiction (a nerve never moves, never _contracts_, when it is touched) the whole matter tapers down to this _something more_, or to _that other thing_. See how very far from being rigorous are those who construct systems. NOTE VII. REAL LABOURS OF GALL AS TO THE BRAIN. Page 128. _Gall, moreover, was a great anatomist._ He found that the medullary substance of the brain was fibrous throughout;[209] he saw the fibres of the medulla oblongata decussate before they form the pyramidal eminences,[210] those of the corpora olivaria, &c.; that is to say, all the ascending fibres of the medulla oblongata across the pons varolii, thalami nervor opticorum, and the corpora striata, as far as the vault of the hemispheres; he saw the bundles formed by these fibres increased in magnitude at each of these passages; he distinguished the fibres which go out in order to expand in the hemispheres, from those that go in in order to give birth to the commissures: many nerves that were regarded as coming out immediately from the brain, were by him traced even into the medulla oblongata, &c. And I repeat that all these facts, with the discovery of which he has enriched the science of anatomy, all of them are the results of a happy thought of his—the idea of _tracing_ the fibres of the brain, or to use a common expression, of substituting in the dissection of the brain the method of _developments_ for that of _sections_. Those of Gall’s opinions which it seems ought not to be adopted, are: that in which he supposes the nerve fibres to be born (he understands the word to the letter) of the gray matter; that in which he contends that the convolutions of the brain are merely foldings of the medullary fibres, and can therefore be _unfolded_; that in which he compares the rete mucosum of the skin to the gray matter of the encephalon, &c., &c.