their cerebral developement, and not by a state influence, which has often set over others, men whose feebleness of character rendered insubordination inevitable, and whose cowardice and imbecility involved all their followers in disaster and death. But in an especial manner will Phrenology render a service to truth and virtue, by silencing all the disingenuous exaggerations, by which the supporters of one political interest endeavour to exalt mediocrity, either in moral or intellectual character, into greatness and integrity; and all those infamous and wilful calumnies, by which the enemies of a public man blacken every transaction of his life, and even where the nature of his measures is not susceptible of dispute, attribute the worst of motives to the best of actions. The calm and dispassionate eye of the unprejudiced people, will settle his pretensions by an infallible criterion; and the time will come, when a glance at the developement of the head, will resolve and determine the most secret meditations of the heart.

The last effect that the general reception and practical knowledge of Phrenology, by society at large, is calculated to produce, which we shall here enumerate, is one, the advantages of which are likely to be the subject of much contrariety of opinion, according as it shall present itself to different members of the body politic. This is its direct tendency to level all artificial distinctions, to establish those of nature alone, and to frustrate those attempts which have hitherto been but too successful to exalt the aristocracy, created by the patents of men, above that nobility of God, which bears on its open countenance the certificates of the imperial college of Heaven's high heraldry. Men are too apt to forget that rank is but the guinea stamp, and to mistake it for the pure gold of wit and worth. Where there are no visible, external, and natural distinctions, which point out to society the essential difference betwixt its wheat and its chaff, the public receive, with passive acquiescence, such signs of greatness as any one chooses to take the trouble of suggesting; and conspire, with tame submission, to continue the fallacies, and give effect to the dicta, which those whom chance has given the possession of the general ear may choose to impose, in the shape of that mouth honour, which, although only breath after all, is nevertheless accompanied by solid personal advantages, and important social privileges. Mankind take it for granted, that a rich man is a wise one, and hear with gracious approbation whatever proceeds from the lips of a lord, if it contain matter just barely sufficient to save him from a verdict of idiocy or furiosity. They are quite satisfied with the relevancy of the evidence of greatness, adduced by Don Whiskerandos, in the Critic, when he disproved the imputation of his being a beefeater, by throwing aside his cloak, and displaying a fine waistcoat; and where there is no other rule for their guidance in the distribution of fame, it is not wonderful that glitter and show should be as good a passport to consideration, as any other test of consequence and respect. But Phrenology introduces a criterion of judgment, which will at once produce a moral revolution in society. It is not to be deceived by names, or to take for granted the resemblance which the painter in politics endeavours to associate betwixt the picture he hangs in the market-place, and the title which he chooses to ascribe to it. It will at once force an imperial imbecile, literally to "hide his diminished head;" it will enable society to pass by birth, and look to brain; it will invite it to find merit where nature has hidden it; and to send rank, and title, and stars, and garters, to that proper obscurity, from which, without honour, and wisdom, and genius, they ought never to have been permitted to emerge.*

Even in the mechanical arts connected with cranioscopic observations, this science is of advantage, and its benefits are beginning to be felt. Portrait-painters, having a Phrenological eye, look for peculiarities of appearance in the heads of their figures; and what they find, is accurately transferred to the canvass. "It has been remarked," observed Mr. Combe, to his audience in Glasgow, "in reference to the extensive applicability of the steam-engine, that it affords equally the means of forging an anchor and making a needle; and it may be said with equal truth, that the applications of Phrenology are not less diversified. This science, we have seen, affords an accurate means of analysing human character, and regulating education and legislation upon rational principles; and an ingenious individual of this city, Mr. Anderson, has applied it successfully to a more humble purpose-that of the making of wigs. This application of Phrenology has been much laughed at, but there is really nothing the least ridiculous in the matter. I understand that all wigs are wrought on blocks of nearly the same form. Now, as the shapes of scarcely two heads are precisely the same, and as the differences in some cases are very great, it is quite evident, that, by such a process, it is impossible for the wig to be accurately adapted to the head of him for whom it is intended. I have visited

CHAPTER III.

SECTION I.-Relevancy of Medical Objections.

METAPHYSICIANS and theologians are not the only opponents of Phrenology, who have manifested more prejudice than logic. Their example has been followed by men, whose very profession and daily studies, ought to have suggested to them the indecency, as well as the irrelevancy, of preliminary difficulties, to the reception or consideration even of a system of classified facts. It is of great consequence that the real field of battle on which Phrenology is alone bound to accept from, or give to, its opponents a formal challenge, should not be transferred from the place where its tents were originally struck; and that the attention of the bystanders should not be diverted from the great object of the campaign, by a sham-fight of mere skirmishers attempting, by the dust which the struggle of their eleemosynary warfare throws up, to give it the appearance of the serious business of the main action. The first point upon which it has been customary to satisfy the doubts of Phrenological inquirers, is, that the brain is the organ of the mind; but this doctrine is not properly the fundamental basis of the science, being rather an inference drawn from certain phenomena, which it has detected; and although the assumption of this position affords many interesting sources of corroboration of Phrenology, still the latter is not necessarily dependent upon it for its existence, and could, hypothetically considered, be supported, although this proposition were never established. The history of its discovery demonstrates this. Dr. Gall," observes Spurzheim, "endowed with great power of observation, viz. with large Individuality and Eventuality, from an early age was struck with the fact, that each of his brothers and sisters, companions and school-fellows, possessed some peculiarity of disposition. The scholars who first excited his attention, were those who learned by heart with great facility, and who frequently gained from him, by repetitions, the places which he had obtained by the merit of his composition. He observed that his school-fellows so gifted, possessed prominent eyes. He found this sign confirmed at different places where he studied, in all who excelled in getting easily by heart, and in giving correct recitations." Thus, Dr. Gall remarked a coincidence betwixt prominent eyes, and a memory for words. He did not inquire why; and even although he had ventured to assign a wrong cause for the phenomenon, the fact would have been true notwithstanding. So having observed that skulls of particular shapes always accompanied the manifestation of certain mental qualities, Phrenologists have inferred the brain to be the organ of the mind; but although they were wrong in this inference, it may not be the less true, that when the coronal surface of the cranium is high, the individual is exalted in his morality; and that when the forehead is low, and the skull small, he is unreflecting or idiotic. It will at once be seen, that, by this line of argument, plain men of sense would at once avoid the infliction of all those medical controversies, which are founded on the alleged want of correspondence betwixt cerebral and mental decay, or of parallelism betwixt the plates of the cranium; and of all those tedious enumerations of anatomical objections, which it is the practice of young surgeons to advance, who, in default of other practice, make patients of Phrenologists, and operate upon them, by the irksome exposition of every possible view in which they can suppose the existence of a frontal sinus, or of irregular thickenings of the skull, to militate against the reception of the science. Were it true that cranial protuberances indicated mental idiosyncrasies, these phenomena, although all on the side of the objectors, could not neutralise this coincidence; and although the brain were the organ of the mind, still did the shape of the skull not

Mr. Anderson's Establishment, and am much pleased with the skill and good sense with which he has surmounted this difficulty. When an organ is large, he makes a corresponding elevation on the block, by means of leather and tin-foil; and having brought the block as nearly as possible to the shape of the person's head, he works the wig upon it, and by this means necessarily succeeds in making a perfect fit. People may laugh at this if they please, but the idea is perfectly sound, and very creditable to the artist's ingenuity."

E

indicate the form of the intellect, all further inquiry would be useless; because the very hypothesis which regulated the investigation, would thus be subverted. Thus physiological, like metaphysical, a priori objections, may be answered by the same species of logic, an appeal from theory to experiment. In this fortress, Phrenology is entitled to throw up her entrenchments; but while the enemy beckons her to descend from her rightful altitude, she can afford to remit somewhat of her prudence, in confident reliance on her inherent strength, and she makes a sally to the plain, where victory awaits her courage, and hovers on her helmet.

SECTION II.-Brain, the Organ of Mind.

66

COULD mere authority settle the question of the relation betwixt mind and brain, we need to proceed no further in the demonstration; for the fact is admitted, or even asserted, by both physiologists and metaphysicians. Prochaska inferred, that, “in the new born infant, the muscles have the automatic movement, and not the voluntary; because the brain is not yet in a state to think." Besides being maintained by such men as Hunter, Pinel, Haslam, Rush, Esquirol, and Foderé, "the part of our body," says Cullen, "more immediately connected with mind, and, therefore, more especially concerned in every affection of the intellectual functions, is the common origin of the nerves; which I shall, in what follows, speak of under the appellation of the brain." Dr. James Gregory observes, that "the brain is the primary organ of the internal powers." Blumenbach declares, that "the mind is closely connected with the brain, as the material condition of mental phenomena." Magendie affirms, that "the brain is the material instrument of thought." Abernethy readily concurs in the proposition, that the brain of animals ought to be regarded as the organization by which the percipient principle becomes variously affected." Dr. Mason Good styles "the organ of the brain as the instrument of the intellectual powers." Locke recognised the principle. Dugald Stewart found, that "a certain condition of the body is necessary to intellectual operations." Dr. Thomas Brown held the brain" essential to life, and to the immediate production of those mental phenomena which constitute our sensations, and, perhaps too, modifying in some measure, directly or indirectly, all the other phenomena of mind;" while Ray asserted it to be "the palace royal of the soul, upon whose security depends whatever privilege belongs to us as immortal beings;" and Tissot, of Berne, contended, that " every one who thinks, and takes notice of his thinking, must be sensible that the brain is in action during the time of thought." In Italian, is used the term uomo di cervello, a man of brain, for a wise man. Avere il cervello nella lingua-to have your brains in your tongue-is to speak well, and act ill. Agrippa talks of Homines quorum cerebrum est in ventre, ingenium in patinis, translated by Shakspeare, as "this lord Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly, his guts in his head." "If you do not tread on your brains with the soles of your feet," is an expression, the reputation of the origin of which is divided between Hegesippus and Demosthenes. Cleland traces the verb, censeo, I think, from the word kan, the head. "A grilli per il capo," he has grasshoppers in his head, is an Italian expression, similar to the Scotch phrase, "he has a bee in his bonnet." Minerva, or Wisdom, issued from the brain of Jupiter. Faber notes, that "caput cerebro vacuum proverbiale est in stupidos et ingenio carente," preceded by Juvenal" Tunc vacui capitis populum Phæaca putavit." Dr. Doddridge, in his Lectures on Ethics, asserts it to be proved, by four considerations, that the soul is seated in the brain. Wollaston affirms, "that the seat of cogitation and reflection, man finds to be in his head." Grove allows "that the brain is the great instrument, or condition rather, of thought and contemplation." Prideaux observes, that "Eumenes had the best head-piece of Alexander's captains;" and Addison explains, that when we say a man has a fine head, we speak in relation to his understanding." Shakspeare, besides many other allusions to the subject, traces the following connection betwixt head and mind:

"My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still breeding thoughts."

Rowe notices

"Mind's imperial seat, the head;"

which Byron calls

"The dome of thought, the palace of the soul;"

and, to conclude this tedious enumeration, Gray, in his Principles of Thought, speaks of

"Superas hominis sedes, arcemque cerebri;

Namque illic posuit solium, et sua templa sacravit,
Mens animi.'

We are only circumscribed in our citations of authority, by the limits of our work; for, in truth, selection is more necessary than accumulation difficult. From mere weight of opinion, therefore, we pass to weight of evidence in point of fact.

The first step in the progress of this position, is, to prove that disposition, reflection, and sentiment, depend upon organization.

The developement of the nerves of the senses, is in the ratio of their exercise. The optic nerve of the pup that is blind for nine days, is much smaller relatively than the nerves of the other senses, and palpably enlarges as sight improves. So the mind is feeble in the helpless corporeal state of infancy; enlarges, strengthens, and decays, as the body attains youth, manhood, and old age. Climate, food, health, produce an effect on the soul, when they have acted on the physical system. The hereditary transmission of constitution, disease, or feature, from sire to son, is not more palpable than the tradition of mental weakness or vigour, genius or vice. "The brave," says Horace, "are the offspring of the valiant and the good; and the virtues of cattle and horses are transmitted from sire to son; nor do the ferocious eagles ever become progenitors of the peaceful dove." The mind is liable to fatigue, as well as the body, and as is all that is dependent on material organization. Sleep that refreshes the one, invigorates the other; and neither of them is distressed when the other is sound. Difference of sex is the result solely of a difference of structure; and the sensations, dispositions, habits, and intellect, vary in the same ratio, the idiosyncrasy being perfectly uniform. In infancy, the organic and mental differences of the sexes are slight; but, gradually as they grow up, the dissimilarity of body and of mind increases and strengthens. The softness and roundness of the female begins to contrast not more with the broad, square, hardy appearance of the male, than her gentleness and yielding tenderness of soul, with his rough, flinty, and bold impetuosity. Each of the lower animals may be discriminated in its mental habits, by the peculiarities of its organic conformation: and when the chrysalis feels an instinct to crawl, it creeps along the ground; but that same creature learns the art and love of flight, the moment that nature furnishes it with wings.

Haller and Sommering prove the brain to be the organ of sensation and motion, by the following considerations:

1. A nerve, when pressed upon, inclosed in a ligature, or divided, loses the faculty of exciting sensations: we may irritate the nerve below the injury, but the patient feels no pain. If sensation existed out of the brain, the nerve would not have been insensible.

2. Compression of a nerve at its origin, produces the same result. The olfactory, optic, auditory, or digital nerves, no longer convey their impressions; but they resume their functions the moment the compression is removed. So also, when pus accumulated on the left side of the corpus callosum of an individual, he became blind of the right eye, but recovered his sight on the removal of the discharge. Sight is, therefore, in the brain, not in the eye.

3. Sometimes pain is distinctly felt to proceed along the nerves, up to the brain, which is often effectually stopped, by intercepting the communication by a ligature. 4. When a limb is removed by amputation, the pain felt at the former seat of the disease still remains, although the leg and its nerves are absent. It is in the mind, therefore, not in the toe. But even although the foot remain, if the brain be compressed, the sense of pain, and all other senses, cease-resuming their functions with the removal of the pressure. The mind is thus in the brain.

5. The power of voluntary motion is stopped, the moment the brain is insensible from pressure, and is resumed whenever it is removed.

Dr. Darwin, in his Zoonomia, has noticed the case of a man, sixty years old, who enjoyed the sense of hearing during the first period of his life, and lost it at thirty. He stated, that, in his dreams, he always imagined that people conversed with him by writing, or by signs, and no one ever appeared to speak to him; hence, with the perceptions he had lost the idea of sounds, although his organs of speech preserved a feeble remainder of articulation. So, of two persons who had only been blind for a few years, neither ever dreamed of the perception of visible objects. These cases demonstrate, that, after ideas cease to make impression through the senses upon the brain, they cease to exist in the mind.

66

The phenomena of insanity furnish evidence of this doctrine. This malady often arises from severe blows on the head, which also produce idiocy and the loss of consciousness, leaving all the system perfectly sound, and affecting the brain alone. An effect upon the mind uniformly acts upon this organ. Fear, rage, hope, disturb the health of the cerebral mass, and madness follows. Lawrence "observed, after death, the heads of many insane persons, and had hardly seen a single brain which did not exhibit obvious marks of disease." Haslam pronounces insanity to be always connected with organic cerebral changes; and out of two hundred cases of this malady, noticed by Greding, one hundred and sixty-seven presented thickening of the skull, and organic affections of the encephalon. The multifarious dissections of Georget constrained him to offer similar testimony. Mr. Davidson, of the Lancaster County Asylum, examined carefully the heads of two hundred deceased lunatics, and scarcely met a single exemption from disease of the brain or its membranes, even where lunacy was recent, and death produced from other causes. In a hundred brains dissected by Dr. Wright, in the Bethlem Lunatic Hospital, disease was palpable; and Lallemand, who, in a few years, observed a greater number of cerebral affections than any other author, soon perceived that they were much more common than is generally supposed, and much more imperfectly known than those of any other organ.' A writer in the Archives Generales de Médecine (1825), states as the result of the examination of one hundred cases; 1st, that in the brains of those who die of insanity, change of structure is always found; 2d, that these changes are the result of inflammation, either acute or chronic; and, 3d, that there exists a correspondence betwixt the symptoms and organic changes. Foderé admits, with Mr. Home, that "the brain is really a viscus, which is connected, as an instrument, with the state of reason or insanity;" and that "a state of automatic dementia and idiotism is almost always accompanied by marks of flaccidity or relaxation of the encephalic organ." Cabanis and Morgagni, in their numerous dissections of the insane, almost always saw augmentation, diminution, or more frequently inequality of consistency in the brain. Georget is convinced "that few bodies of insane persons will be examined, without exhibiting appreciable traces of the affection of this organ." Insanity, then, is a cerebral disorder, produced frequently by mental causes; in so much, that national dementia is fearfully increased by theological or political convulsions, upon which supervene violent intellectual commotions. Such was the effect of the Reformation, the usurpation of Cromwell, the declaration of American independence, and the first Revolution in France, that parents became insane, or gave birth to frantic or idiot children. By an effort of the will, a priest, mentioned by Saint Augustin, could fall into an ecstacy, during which he became insensible to the pains even of the torture; and Cardanus, who affirms that he was similarly gifted, explains the mode in which it operated thus:-" Et initium hujus est a capite, maxime cerebello, diffunditurque per totam dorsi spinam, vi magna continetur; hocque solum sentio quod sum extra me ipsum; magnaque quadam vi, paululum me contineo." Mendelsohn fell into a swoon the moment philosophy was talked of; and Pascal, by a fall from a bridge, ever after shuddered even in his room, conceiving that he was standing on the brink of a precipice. The mind having conceived a prejudice, it produces a palpable effect on the brain and body. The Roman ladies faint at the sight of roses; and Capellini mentions that he saw a lady fall into a syncope, on perceiving a rose in a girl's bosom, although it turned out to be an artificial one. So, a man whom the sight of a spider threw into fits, was equally terrified at the presentation of a waxen one. In like manner, a clergyman fainted whenever a certain verse in Jeremiah was read.*

* Amatus Lusitanus knew a monk who never went out of his cell when roses were in bloom, from the fainting which their sight produced; and a relation of Scaliger was similarly affected