Idee einer neuen Hirnanatomie (1811) : Originaltext und Übersetzung / Charles Bell ; mit Einleitung herausgegeben von Erich Ebstein.

  • Charles Bell
Date:
1911
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Idee einer neuen Hirnanatomie (1811) : Originaltext und Übersetzung / Charles Bell ; mit Einleitung herausgegeben von Erich Ebstein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of sense and reason. Instinctive motions are the operations of the same organs, the brain and nerves and muscles, which minister to reason and volition in our mature years. When the young of any animal turns to the nipple, directed by the sense of smelling, the same operations are performed, and through the same means, as afterwards when we make an effort to avoid what is noxious, or desire and move towards what is agreeable. The operations of the brain may be said to be three- fold: 1. The frame of the body is endowed with the charac- ters of life, and the vital parts held together as one system through the operation of the brain and [15] nerves; and the secret operations of the vital organs suffer the controul of the brain, though we are unconscious of the thousand delicate operations which are every instant going on in the body. 2. In the second place, the instinctive motions which precede the deve- lopement of the intellectual faculties are performed through the brain and nerves. 3. In the last place, the operation of the senses in rouzing the faculties of the mind, and the exer- cise of the mind over the moving parts of the body, is through the brain and nerves. The first of these is perfect in nature, and independent of the mind. The second is a prescribed and limited operation of the instrument of thought and agency. The last begins by imperceptible degrees, and has no limit in extent and variety. It is that to which all the rest is sub- servient, the end being the calling into activity and the sustaining of an intellectual being. Thus we see that in as far as is necessary to the great system, the operation of the [16] brain, nerves, and muscles are perfect from the beginning; and we are naturally moved to ask. Might not the operations of the mind have been thus perfect and spontaneous from the beginning as well as slowly excited into action by outward impressions? Then man would have been an insulated being, not only cut off from the inanimate world around him, but from his fellows; he would have been an individual, not a part of a whole. That he may have a motive and a spring to action, and suffer pain