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If the relation was a reflex, it would have to be classed now as one of those local nerve circuits, which are pretty common among the viscera, a local call and reply as it were, without mediation of the great long distance trunk lines in the spinal cord and the medulla oblongata. The work of Bayliss and Starling, two English physiologists, was commenced then to test the hypothesis.
I do not see that I have helped them one step towards the possession of the land. Do you remember the old proverb about certain people who should not see half-finished work? All our work in this world has to be only what the physiologists call functional. God has a great scheme running on through ages.
Is there any test of a physiological species? The usual answer of physiologists is in the affirmative. It is said that such a test is to be found in the phaenomena of hybridisation in the results of crossing races, as compared with the results of crossing species.
Experiments of physiologists have proved, not only that change of diet is beneficial, but that digestion is facilitated by a mixture of ingredients in each meal. Both these truths are now influencing cattle-feeding.
All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of both plants and animals have disappeared from the earth for the want of the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and flourished.
The proof that all the members of any given group of animals, or plants, had thus descended, would be ordinarily considered sufficient to entitle them to the rank of physiological species, for most physiologists consider species to be definable as "the offspring of a single primitive stock."
In hydropathic establishments it might be an improvement to add a small foot-bath, formed by a sinking of about 6 in. in the floor, and filled with hot water; for physiologists tell us it is bad for invalids to enter the hot rooms with cold feet. Supply pipes, a waste, and overflow would have to be provided for this bath, and a marble seat might be placed round it.
It has been observed by many psychologists and physiologists that in the waking state, when images do not arise from the immediate presence of objects, or are not directed by the will to a definite aim, they appear, group themselves, and disperse by the immediate association of ideas, and the measurements of time and space are modified just as they are in dreams.
Without taking these modifying conditions into account, a correct estimate of brain-power is impossible. And it is because these modifying conditions have been ignored by many professed teachers of Phrenology, and but poorly expressed by others who did recognize them, that many eminent physiologists have condemned phrenology hastily, as having no sound basis in physiology.
But," I added, in a whisper, terrified by my own question, "do not physiologists agree in this: namely, that though illusory phantasms may haunt the sane as well as the insane, the sane know that they are only illusions, and the insane do not." "Such a distinction," answered Faber, "is far too arbitrary and rigid for more than a very general and qualified acceptance.
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