y applied to this
organ by Spurzheim. Yet even this term expresses too much for its
average daily action, and Violence, Impulsiveness, or Vehemence would
come nearer to expressing its ordinary manifestation.

The reader will now perceive that the psychic functions of certain
organs can seldom be adequately expressed by one word, and that three
words are required to express fully the moderate, the active, and the
abnormal manifestations. Fortunately, however, this difficulty of
nomenclature applies only to that portion of the brain which tends to
the abnormal. Man's nobler faculties belonging to the upper region of
the brain are essentially good and normal. The abnormal difficulty
does not come into their description.

[Illustration]

Its operation is limited to the region lying around the ears, the
basilar region, the tendency of which is to exhaust the spiritual
vitality of the brain in ministering to the body. This will be clearly
understood when we understand the fundamental law of all cerebral
action, the law of direction, or

PATHOGNOMIC LAW.

This law is the grandest generalization of science that was ever
conceived. It is the fundamental law of the relations of the two
worlds, the psychic and the physical. The spiritual and material
worlds unite in man, in whom the eternal spirit is combined with a
transitory material body, and the law of their interaction is _the law
of the universe_.

In its application to man, the law is simply this, that all organs of
the brain act in accordance with their position,--in accordance with
their _pathognomic line_, or line of action, which is the line of
their central fibres, the tendency of which is toward the surface of
the brain, where they reach the interior of the cranium. It will be a
sufficient approximation to the mathematical truth if for the present
we say that the pathognomic line may be indicated by a perpendicular
to the surface of the cranium where the organ is located.

When we establish the pathognomic line, we establish a perfect
criterion of the organic action, for the action is always in
accordance with the line; and this fundamental law gives a key to all
psychology, and gives it a geometrical simplicity.

In accordance with this law, the frontal or intellectual organs act
toward the front, and maintain our relations with that which is before
us. Acting in that manner, they throw out or expend the vital forces,
and exhaust the energies which belon