BIOGRAPHY OF DR. GALL.* FRANCOIS JOSEPH GALL was born in a village of the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the 9th of March, 1758. His father was a merchant and mayor of Tiefenbrun, a village two leagues distant from Pforzheim, in Swabia. His parents, professing the Roman Catholic religion, had intended him for the church; but his natural dispositions were opposed to it. His studies were pursued at Baden, afterwards at Brucksal, and then were continued at Strasburg. Having selected the healing art for his profession, he went, in 1781, to Vienna, the Medical School of which had obtained great reputation, particularly since the times of Van Swieten and Stahl. Dr. Gall gives an account, of which the following is an abstract, of the manner in which he was led to the study of the natural talents and dispositions of men, his views of which terminated in the formation of the Phrenological System. From an early age he was given to observation, and was struck with the fact, that each of his brothers and sisters, companions in play, and schoolfellows, possessed some peculiarity of talent or disposition, which distinguished him from others. Some of his schoolmates were distinguished by the beauty of their penmanship, some by their success in arithmetic, and others by their talent for acquir * This Biography is compiled chiefly from "The Transactions of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society," "The Edinburgh Phrenological Journal," and the "Journal de la Société Phrénologique de Paris." ED. ing a knowledge of natural history, or of languages. The compositions of one were remarkable for elegance, while the style of another was stiff and dry; and a third connected his reasonings in the closest manner, and clothed his argument in the most forcible language. Their dispositions were equally different, and this diversity appeared also to determine the direction of their partialities and aversions. Not a few of them manifested a capacity for employments which they were not taught: they cut figures in wood, or delineated them on paper: some devoted their leisure to painting, or the culture of a garden, while their comrades abandoned themselves to noisy games, or traversed the woods to gather flowers, seek for birds' nests, or catch butterflies. In this manner each individual presented a character peculiar to himself; and Gall never observed, that the individual, who, in one year, had displayed selfish or knavish dispositions, became in the next a good and faithful friend. The scholars with whom young Gall had the greatest difficulty in competing, were those who learned by heart with great facility; and such individuals frequently gained from him by their repetitions the places which he had obtained by the merit of his original compositions. Some years afterwards, having changed his place of residence, he still met individuals endowed with an equally great talent of learning to repeat. He then observed, that his schoolfellows, so gifted, possessed prominent eyes; and he recollected, that his rivals in the first school had been distinguished by the same peculiarity. When he entered the University, he directed his attention, from the first, to the students whose eyes were of this description, and he soon found that they all excelled in getting rapidly by heart, and giving correct recitations, although many of them were by no means distinguished in point of general talent. This observation was recognized also by the other students in the classes; and, although the connection betwixt the talent and the external sign was not at this time established upon such complete evidence as is requisite for a philosophical conclusion, yet Dr. Gall could not believe that the coincidence of the two circumstances thus observed was entirely accidental. He sus pected, therefore, from this period, that they stood in an important relation to each other. After much reflection, he conceived, that if Memory for words was indicated by an external sign, the same might be the case with the other intellectual powers; and, from that moment, all individuals distinguished by any remarkable faculty became the objects of his attention. By degrees, he conceived himself to have found external characteristics, which indicated a decided disposition for Painting, Music, and the Mechanical Arts. He became acquainted, also, with some individuals remarkable for the determination of their character, and he observed, a particular part of their heads to be very largely developed. This fact first suggested to him the idea of looking to the head for signs of the Moral Sentiments. But in making these observations, he never conceived, for a moment, that the skull was the cause of the different talents, as has been erroneously represented ;he referred the influence, whatever it was, to the Brain. In following out, by observations, the principle which accident had thus suggested, he for some time encountered difficulties of the greatest magnitude. Hitherto he had been altogether ignorant of the opinions of Physiologists, touching the brain, and of Metaphysicians respecting the mental faculties, and had simply observed nature. When, however, he began to enlarge his knowledge of books, he found the most extraordinary conflict of opinions every where prevailing, and this, for the moment, made him hesitate about the correctness of his own observations. found that the moral sentiments had, by an almost general consent, been consigned to the thoracic and abdominal viscera; and, that while Pythagoras, Plato, Galen, Haller, and some other Physiologists, placed the sentient soul or intellectual faculties in the brain, Aristotle placed it in the heart, Van Helmont in the stomach, Des Cartes and his followers in the pineal gland, and Drelincourt and others in the cerebellum. He He observed also that a greater number of Philosophers and Physiologists asserted, that all men are born with equal mental faculties; and that the differences observable among them are owing either to education, or to the accidental circumstances in which they are placed. 66 66 If all differences are accidental, he inferred that there could be no natural signs of predominating faculties, and consequently, that the project of learning, by observation, to distinguish the functions of the different portions of the brain, must be hopeless. This difficulty he combated, by the reflection that his brothers, sisters, and schoolfellows had all received very nearly the same education, but that he had still observed each of them unfolding a distinct character, over which circumstances appeared to exert only a limited control. He observed also, that not unfrequently they, whose education had been conducted with the greatest care, and on whom the labors of teachers had been most freely lavished, remained far behind their companions in attainments. Often," says Dr. Gall, we were accused of want of will, or deficiency in zeal; but many of us could not, even with the most ardent desire, followed out by the most obstinate efforts, attain in some pursuits even to mediocrity; while in some other points, some of us surpassed our schoolfellows without an effort, and almost, it might be said, without perceiving it ourselves. But, in point of fact, our masters did not appear to attach much faith to the system which taught the equality of mental faculties; for they thought themselves entitled to exact more from one scholar, and less from another. They spoke frequently of natural gifts, or of the gifts of God, and consoled their pupils in the words of the gospel, by assuring them that each would be required to render an account, only in proportion to the gifts which he had received.” * Being convinced, by these facts, that there is a natural and constitutional diversity of talents and dispositions, he encountered, in books, still another obstacle to his success in determining the external signs of the mental powers. He found that, instead of faculties for languages, drawing, distinguishing places, music, and mechanical arts, corresponding to the different talents which he had observed in his schoolfellows, the metaphysicians spoke only of general powers, such as perception, conception, memory, im * Preface by Dr. Gall to the "Anatomie, &c. du Cerveau." |