Students of phrenology will be astonished to find what a great deal of information may be gained by means of careful observation, when actual investigation is impossible. No opportunity should be lost of studying shape, poise, and balance of the human head. From the temples and brows of the man occupying the same seat on an omnibus a great deal is to be learnt, in spite of his headgear; the faculties 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, and 35 will probably protrude, and demonstrate what degree of love of form, size, individuality, eventuality, alimentiveness, destructiveness, vitativeness, conjugality, and amativeness exist in his nature.
Churches, concert rooms, and theaters abound with opportunities for the scrutiny of masculine heads, and upon each is engraved those abstract qualities furnished by the memorized chart.
The phrenologist should take pains to keep his hands and nails perfectly clean. He should bathe them between each experiment, as the natural grease of the hair soils them, and no one likes to have his skull touched by unclean fingers. It is essential for him to possess and cultivate a buoyant disposition, which will tend to help and encourage him, and not to condemn a subject for the weaknesses of character he discovers.
Few ills have no cure. This is as true of mental inefficiency as of physical ailments, and the prophecies of the humane phrenologist are set in the major and not the minor key. Every individual, however seemingly worthless or uninteresting, possesses some divine gift, which perhaps lies dormant and neglected through his ignorance of its existence. Here it is that the phrenologist is able to let a chink of light penetrate the darkness, and a few kind, judicious words will do much to bring back the latent self-respect to him who has despaired of being released from the fetters of evil habits, intemperance, sloth, or indifference to the liberty of wholesome well-being.
The motto of the student should be never to condemn. When he has once reached the secret of identity, he should set himself to appeal and rouse the dying spirit of manhood to a new resurrection of power and achievement, for probably adverse and bitter circumstances, heredity, and poverty have done much to batter down the higher nature and develop the baser qualities of the man whose faculties he examines; and he can only dimly imagine, but never fathom, the strength of the temptations that warp the various molds in which the human mind is set.
The Humorous Side of Phrenology
In drawing-room exhibitions, only the lighter side of phrenology should be dealt with. A fund of humor and wit can be demonstrated here, so that instruction is blended with amusement, and it is not unfitting to use animals as illustrations of different qualities. For instance, the refrain in the once-popular lyric, “But the cat came back,” clearly testifies that this animal possessed the nodosity of inhabitiveness to a marked degree. Not so the man of music-hall fame whose pathetic pleading, “Please don’t take me home,” stirs our heartstrings most potently, or “Bill Bailey,” the wanderer. The small dog that ogles a larger comrade engaged with a bone, but who fears his mightier powers too greatly to venture open attack, possesses “cupboard” affection rather than amativeness.
The blinkered horse, were it granted speech, would doubtless demonstrate the fact that it has cultivated the faculty of spirituality in no small degree, for its sense of the unseen is remarkable.
The bull has only to kick up his heels and lower his horns at a red parasol to vindicate his apt discernment of color. The manner in which the watch-dog registers the shape of his enemy’s calves in his memory is a truly astonishing sign of his sense of form and locality. The serpent’s feline smile at the bird is eloquent of its sociability and expectation; its glistening coils are the personification of blandness and invitation to embrace. Stay-at-home oysters are famous for domesticity. The fish swallowing the hooked worm illustrates a beautiful trust and faith in the providential plans man culminates for his welfare. In the hobbled ass, wandering over and over his patch of grass, economy, adhesiveness, and a very praiseworthy amount of application are shown.
It might be well for the ambitious phrenologist to study the skulls of these and other animals, birds, and fishes, for in these the unadulterated essences of virtues and vices and instinctive propensities are discovered. The human head may be likened to a very rich pudding composed of very different ingredients, flavorings, and strata of coloring, and sugared with conventionalities and hypocrisies. The animal, on the contrary, exhibits its true qualities as frankly as a sirloin of raw beef suspended in a butcher’s window.