The idea was not original with Dr. Gall. In the thirteenth century Albertus Magnus divided the cranium into three regions controlling Faculties, Judgment and Imagination. In 1562 Luigi Dolce divided the brain into nine regions controlling as many mental powers. Gall first noticed that all his fellow schoolboys who were noted for their knowledge of languages and memory of words had prominent eyes. Following this as a clew, he arrived at the functions and locations of twenty-seven organs of mental faculties which he named according to their action. Spurzheim found still others, and Drs. Fowler and Wells, the best known American phrenologists, increased the number of such divisions to thirty-five. They divided them into four principal groups:
1. Domestic group; including love, patriotism, fondness for home, attachment to friends, etc.
2. Selfish group; including combativeness, destructiveness, appetite, fondness of inflicting pain, etc.
3. Moral group; including sense of right, integrity, justice, veneration, benevolence, etc.
4. Self-perfecting group; including constructiveness, sense of the beautiful, imitation, wit, etc.
Besides these there are two minor groups of Intellectual Faculties:—
A. Perceptive Group; including individuality, perception of color, weight, arrangement, etc.
B. Reflective Group; including dependence, efficiency, power of analysis, sympathy, etc.
Many physicians have tried to prove the accuracy of this theory. Thousands of skulls of human beings as well as of animals have been examined and their cranial bumps studied. It is believed that each convolution of the brain is a separate organ and that the great centers of motion are in the front part of the brain. Many books have been written on the subject.
