Animal faculties

Use in the book

Powers, organs and spirits

The anatomical discussion gives the head its animal organs, the brain and the nerves by which sensation and movement reach the body’s other parts. Within that upper region, Burton calls the brain the chief organ serving the animal faculties and the home of memory, judgment and reason. His ventricular account then assigns common sense, imagination, thought and memory to particular chambers. The language moves between a broad region of mental and sensory activity and a more detailed allocation of powers. It should not be narrowed to external sensation alone.

The associated “Animal spirits” are bodily agents in this physiological model. Formed from vital spirits, brought to the brain and distributed through nerves, they give sensation and movement to subordinate members. Faculties name powers; spirits mediate activity; organs are bodily instruments. Burton’s account needs all three roles. The statement that the brain serves a faculty does not turn the faculty into the physical cavity, and the name “spirit” does not make its physiological bearer a ghost.

The sensitive soul is divided into apprehension and movement. Its moving power embraces appetite and change of place; particular bodily motions include the movements of limbs and breathing. Burton also describes internal motion through spirits and pulse. His category is consequently broader than a modern phrase such as “voluntary locomotion” would suggest. The adjoining distinction between natural, sensitive and intellectual appetite further warns that the whole catalogue cannot be confined to acts consciously chosen by a human subject.

An action’s object, directing cause and instruments

The analysis of movement distinguishes what moves, the means by which it moves, and the thing moved. Under the first heading Burton separates efficient cause from end. The end is the object pursued or avoided, illustrated by a dog catching a hare. The efficient cause in a human is reason or imagination subordinate to reason; in a beast the account gives this role to imagination. Imagination moves appetite, appetite moves the moving faculty, and that faculty commands the bodily organ through the spirit’s mediation.

The organs are nerves, muscles and tendons. Their contraction and relaxation draw the joint towards its intended position; the thing moved is the body or a movable member. This sequence keeps the pursued object, the directing power and the instrument apart. Calling the hare a cause in the sense of an end does not make it the bodily mechanism contracting the dog’s muscles. Equally, the nerve’s execution of movement does not make it the faculty that judges the object worth pursuing.

The imagination digression uses a shortened version of this chain to explain sleepwalking. Vapours stir imagination, imagination stirs appetite, and appetite moves animal spirits so that the body walks as though awake. That explanation belongs to Burton’s historical physiology; it also illustrates why “animal” cannot simply mean an act resulting from awake, deliberate choice.

Disturbance and restraint

The causal discussion says that the brain is disordered either in itself or “by consent.” In the latter case, vapours rise from other parts into the head and alter the animal faculties. Consent means physiological connection or sympathy, not the patient’s permission. The neighbouring paragraphs dispute hot and cold causes and introduce heart, liver and stomach. Thus the brain-associated powers may be affected by a disorder whose source lies elsewhere in the body.

A later explanation, attributed to Hercules de Saxonia, makes disordered animal spirits the nearest and immediate causes of symptoms and calls those spirits “immateriall.” Burton follows it with an alternative account based on scorched humours. This reported position should remain visible beside the anatomy’s description of spirits as subtle bodily agents; the book does not present a completely uniform terminology of their substance.

The reverse direction also matters. In the account of passions, imagination communicates an object to the heart and spirits are redistributed. A violent passion can draw spirits away from other parts, impairing their functions: one looks without noticing or hears without attending. The faculties are neither wholly insulated from bodily conditions nor simply passive labels for them; Burton traces interacting processes.

In the treatment section, restraint supplies a practical distinction between desire and execution. Appetite in a fever wants to drink; sore eyes want rubbing; reason forbids it and the moving faculty does not carry out the action. The preceding civil-government comparison distinguishes persuading or moderating emotion from preventing bodily members from obeying it. The moving faculty can therefore be recruited against an appetite without the appetite first disappearing. This is the particular lesson of the examples, which remain historical illustrations rather than current advice about fever or eye care.

Burton’s confidence in restraint must be read beside his argument that inward bodily causes can make melancholy fear persistent. In the elevated-plank comparison, faculties and members obey an impressed image of falling; the next paragraph insists that advice can accomplish little while the bodily causes remain. The vocabulary of government therefore coexists with an account of genuine impairment and limits to immediate control. It should not be turned into the claim that every sufferer can cure distress merely by commanding a faculty to stop.

Related entries

Animal and vegetal; Faculty; Soul; Spirits; Common sense; Imagination; Appetite; Will and nill; Consent and essence. Future entry: Nerves

Places to read

1. Spirits and their bodily routesAnimal spirits formed from vital spirits and carried through nerves for sensation and movement
2. The upper region and its facultiesBrain, nerves, ventricular locations and the distinction of powers from organs
3. Sensitive and moving powersApprehension and movement, appetite, end and efficient cause, spirit-mediated execution, breathing and pulse
4. Interacting faculties and bodily conditionsPassion diverts spirits; vapours and imagination lead to sleepwalking
5. Disorder “by consent”Local brain disorder contrasted with vapours arriving from another part
6. A competing account of the spiritsSaxonia’s immaterial animal spirits and the following humoral alternative
7. The limits of commandsFaculties obeying the fear of falling, followed by the insistence on inward causes
8. Desire without executionPolitical government as a comparison for bodily restraint; drinking and rubbing examples

In this edition

“Animal faculties” is retained, where the Editor note makes its human-inclusive meaning explicit. The same phrase is expanded as “faculties of sensation and movement.” The original paragraph itself proceeds to memory, judgment and reason; the concise modern equivalent should therefore not be mistaken for an exhaustive list of everything Burton associates with the brain.

“Moving faculty” becomes “faculty of movement”. “By consent” becomes “through its connection with other parts”. In the movement analysis, “Cords” becomes “tendons,” while the physiological sense of “spirit” is retained. These are local clarifications of the old account, not substitutions of modern nervous physiology.

animal faculties · local use 1

Printed “animal faculties” (English phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: animal faculties

Powers associated with the brain, including sensation, movement and the named mental activities.

Context: Burton’s anatomy; region and organ serve the faculties rather than being identical to them.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: In the upper Region serving the animal faculties, the chief Organ is the Brain

Modern rendering, Modern wording: faculties of sensation and movement

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: In the upper region, which serves the faculties of sensation and movement

animal faculties · local use 2

Printed “animal faculties” (English phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering, Modern wording: animal faculties

Brain-associated powers altered by vapours arriving from elsewhere.

Context: Physiological explanation; external-to-brain origin does not imply supernatural origin.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: vapors which arise from the other parts, and fume up into the head, altering the animal faculties

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: vapours rising from the other parts and steaming up into the head, altering the animal faculties

animal spirits

Printed “Animal spirits” (English phrase).

Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering, Modern wording: Animal spirits

Subtle bodily agents, formed from vital spirits and mediated through brain and nerves.

Context: Historical physiology: spirits confer sensation and movement.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: The Animal spirits formed of the Vital, brought up to the Brain

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: Animal spirits, formed from the vital spirits, are carried up to the brain

by consent

Printed “by consent” (English phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: by consent

Through physiological connection with other parts, contrasted with disorder arising in the brain itself.

Context: Consent is relation among bodily parts, not patient permission.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: The brain is still distempered by himself, or by consent

Modern rendering, Modern wording: through its connection with other parts

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: The brain is always disordered either in itself or through its connection with other parts

cord

Printed “Cords” (English).

Tendons or sinews among the instruments by which bodily movement is performed.

Context: Spirits move the structures and draw the joint; cords are instruments.

Source: original body

Source wording: Nerves, Muscles, Cords

efficient cause

Printed “Efficient cause” (English phrase).

Citation key, Modern rendering, Modern wording: efficient cause

Printed form, Original wording: Efficient cause

Source or agent producing movement, distinguished from the pursued object as end.

Context: In humans reason or subordinate imagination; in beasts imagination, according to this account.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: That which moves, is either the Efficient cause, or End

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: What causes movement is either its efficient cause or its end

end

Printed “end” (English).

Aim or object for whose sake movement occurs; dog and hare illustrate this.

Context: The desired or avoided object is final cause, not bodily instrument.

Source: original body

Source wording: The end is the object, which is desired or eschued

immaterial

Printed “immateriall” (English).

Not composed of bodily matter, in Saxonia’s reported explanation by disordered spirits; a contrast with other bodily-humour accounts.

Context: Burton attributes the exclusive explanation to Hercules de Saxonia and follows it with another position.

Source: original body

Source wording: spirits alone, animal especially, and those immateriall

moving faculty · Moving Faculty

Printed “Moving Faculty” (English phrase).

Citation key, Modern rendering, Modern wording: moving faculty

Printed form, Original wording: Moving Faculty

Sensitive power causing internal and external bodily movements, divided into appetite and movement from place to place.

Context: Burton’s classification, broader than only deliberate locomotion.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: This Moving Faculty, is the other power of the Sensitive Soul

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: This moving faculty is the other power of the sensitive soul

moving faculty

Printed “moving faculty” (English phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: moving faculty

Power of bodily execution recruited to resist appetite instead of carrying out its demands.

Context: Burton’s counsel; her refers to appetite and the moving faculty is to restrain it.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: let the moving faculty over-rule her

Modern rendering, Modern wording: faculty of movement

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: let the faculty of movement overrule it