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Modern physiologists do not ascribe so exalted a function to the little pineal gland, but, in a vague sort of way, they adopt Descartes' principle, and suppose that the soul is lodged in the cortical part of the brain at least this is commonly regarded as the seat and instrument of consciousness. Descartes has clearly stated what he conceived to be the difference between spirit and matter.
He believed that the functions are performed by the various organs of the bodies of animals and men as a mechanism, to which in man was added the soul. This soul he located in the pineal gland, a degenerate and presumably functionless little organ in the brain.
If indeed the following argument, in its brief riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final: "Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how, without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?"
The tadpole as a reagent to test out the growth effects of different glands of internal secretion has also been employed for the pineal. Ten-day-old tadpoles fed on pineal present a marked translucency of the skin due to a retraction of the skin pigment cells.
Hear him in a lunacy case listen to the deep and subtle distinctions he draws between the symptoms of mere eccentricity and erring intellect remark how insignificant the physician appears in the case, who has made these things the study of a life long hear how the barrister confounds him with a hail-storm of technicals talking of the pineal gland as if it was an officer of the court, and of atrophy of the cerebral lobes, as if he was speaking of an attorney’s clerk.
The courteous stranger's nose had got perched upon the top of the pineal gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of the four great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of sleep the whole night thro' for it there was no keeping a limb still amongst them in short, they got up like so many ghosts.
Being free, these acts might deflect evolution like Descartes' soul acting on the pineal gland into wonderful new courses, prevent dissolution, and gradually bring on the kingdom of Heaven, all as the necessary implication of the latest science and the most atheistic philosophy. But the recent improvements on that system take the latter turn.
So one may list: Infancy as the epoch of the thymus Childhood as the epoch of the pineal Adolescence as the epoch of the gonads Maturity as the epoch of whatever gland is left in control as the result of the life struggle. Senility as the epoch of general endocrine deficiency. Infancy as the epoch of the thymus explains why, in any given geographic locality, the babies look alike and act alike.
And S th was clearly getting drunk too. "Why, you don't see where they hit," said S th drawlingly. "Somewhere about the pineal; and therefore we say impudence is moral, sometimes immoral, as just now when you damned me. No more of your old junk, I say, sitting here in my cathedra, which by the way is spring-bottomed, which may account for my moral elasticity that a highwayman is a coward."
It appears thus the blood brother of the adrenal cortex which also influences the skin pigment and so susceptibility of the organism to light, brain growth and sex ripening. It is interesting that Descartes, in 1628, considered the pineal the seat of the soul.
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