comprehensiveness and definiteness thus attained: it depends also on the spontaneous correspondence between the voice and hearing; we can talk to ourselves, and this makes oral expression capable of continuous improvement.

The importance of language for the solitary utterance, and so, either for the calming or exaltation, of sentiment is most appreciable when we consider religious practices. Its reaction on thought is universally recognised. For true language, as distinct from empty verbiage, the cerebral faculty of expression must be subordinated to the four other intellectual powers-to the two species of Contemplation, respectively, for names of substances and of properties; to the two sorts of Meditation for means of comparison and processes of co-ordination.

Now, having sufficiently dealt with the affective impulses and the consultative work of the Intellect, we have to pass in review the qualities of Character, properly so called, on which depends the final realisation of the result wished for and prepared. These practical aptitudes evidently are (16) Courage (or Energy) to undertake an operation, (17) Prudence (or Circumspection) in executing it, and (18) Firmness (or Perseverance) to carry it through. No practical success can, in general, be achieved without a sufficient combination of these three i qualities. They are in themselves independent alike of the affective nature and the intellect; their

exercise, like that of the emotions, is blind; they are as much disposed to assist bad designs as good, and obey the impulses alike of the higher, the mean, and the lower inclinations; and they may be called into energetic exercise in pursuit of chimerical ends and impossible projects, though, of course, practical efficiency is much furthered by right feeling and sound thinking.

Each of the eighteen cerebral functions which we have now completely enumerated can act apart, but our operations usually require the concurrence of several faculties. The synergy of the affective and active regions is scarcely denied; it is only for the intellect that independence is claimed. But the truth is, that it can only choose between two masters, the personal inclinations and the social. When it believes itself free, it is in fact obeying the egoistic instincts. Every sort of intellectual operation is stimulated by a moral impulse. Attention, even in its lowest degree, depends on some affection; and this is still more true of meditation. Again, the intellect is dependent on the character no less than on the heart. The theorician, as well as the practical man, requires courage, circumspection, and perseverance. Failure of the intellect is less frequently due to its own insufficiency than to an ill-regulated heart or an impotent character. This joint action of different cerebral faculties or qualities is the most important harmony in the animal constitution; but it should never be forgotten that the

brain must also be studied in its relations with the whole organism, not only with the mechanisms of sensation and motion, but with the vegetative viscera. Without such a study we must fail to appreciate the consensus of the human system as an indivisible whole, and should not do justice to the synthetic character of Physiological Science.*

Comte always recognises the vitalistic school of Stahl and Barthez as compensating its ontological tendencies by its synthetic spirit. In estimating the merits of Stahl and fixing his position in the history of Science, his great philosophical service in this respect is sometimes not sufficiently considered. Justice can be done to him without depreciating the important work of the physico-chemical school, though it was affected by the opposite vice of a materialistic tendency.

CHAPTER III.

CEREBRAL ORGANS OF THE MORAL AND

HAV

INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

AVING Completed the theory of the moral and intellectual functions of human and animal nature, we turn to that of the corresponding organs. Whilst recognising the valuable practical results to be attained by the physiological study considered separately, and without entertaining an exaggerated notion of the importance of the anatomical complement, we must yet regard it as requisite for a complete cerebral theory that a sufficient correlation should be established between the functions and the organs.

Comte's anatomical theory of the brain is, he admits, less precise and less convincing than his physiological theory. He did not judge it possible to do more at present than to assign the situation of each organ, leaving indeterminate their respective forms and magnitudes. Even the situation is more or less hypothetical; and it must be the work of anatomists in the future to ascertain the shape and size of the eighteen organs whose existence is inferred from the physiological investigation. One

day there must be brought to light such differences -physical, chemical, or of minute structure-between different portions of the brain as will indicate the limits and the dimensions of the several organs; and then, the various applications of the Comparative Method will gradually supply a wellsupported scheme of localisation. But even previous to this verifying process, the hypothetic arrangement proposed by Comte will be found highly useful. It is the best concrete representation ever suggested of the entire nature of man and the higher animals, enabling us to recall readily, and to place in their proper relations to each other, the several faculties and tendencies which compose that nature. This operation of assigning situations to the several organs is, indeed, in Comte's view, founded altogether on the general principle, that their relative situations must be conformable to the true relations of the corresponding functions already enumerated.

The first application of this principle is in determining the respective positions of the two groups of the intellectual and the moral organs (the latter comprehending the character as well as the heart). Now, the former must be so placed as to be in connexion with each sensory apparatus through which they appreciate the outer world, and must therefore have their seat in the frontal region-a conclusion which agrees with the inspirations of ordinary good sense. The rest of the brain-much its larger