Anatomy of the Brain

Preface to the Friendly Reader.

From the dug-up and unearthed human head, the Romans once promised to themselves and to their Empire eternity, as if under the best of auspices; nor were they persuaded that their world could be built upon the Capitol unless the Capitol were built upon a dead man’s skull. I am not one who meditates on empires in the arts, or promises myself triumphs from a conquered world of letters: but in the meantime, I have long since discovered by sufficiently clear evidence that it is entirely in vain to labor in Philosophy, especially Natural, unless it be under those very same auspices.

For since the province which I hold in this Academy demanded that I comment on the duties of the senses, both external and internal, on the faculties and affections of the soul, and also on the organs and the varied apparatus of all these things; and for that purpose I had devised some syllogisms of reasoning and hypotheses not disagreeing with the phenomena; which (as is wont to happen in such business) had finally grown into a certain structure of art and doctrine. Yet at last, when, the heat of invention cooling, I re-examined the individual parts and subjected them to more severe calculations, I seemed to myself to be like some painter who had delineated a human head not according to the truth of an archetype, but to the whim of a bold brush, having followed not what was truer, but what was more convenient, and what he preferred to report rather than what he actually knew. Pondering these things seriously with