The Skull rises high above Causality, and spreads wide in the region of Ideality; the strength of his moral feelings lay in that region.
The combination of large organs of the Animal Propensities, with large Cautiousness, and only full Hope, together with the unfavourable circumstances in which he was placed, accounts for the melancholy and internal unhappiness with which Burns was so frequently afflicted. This melancholy was rendered still deeper by bad health.
The combination of Acquisitiveness, Cautiousness, Love of Approbation, and Conscientiousness, is the source of his keen feelings in regard to pecuniary independence. The great power of his Animal Propensities would give him strong temptations to waste; but the combination just mentioned would impose a powerful restraint. The head indicates the elements of an economical character; and it is known that he died free from debt, notwithstanding the smallness of his salary.
No Phrenologist can look upon this head, and consider the circumstances in which Burns was placed, without vivid feelings of regret. Burns must have walked the earth with a consciousness of great superiority over his associates in the station in which he was placed—of powers calculated for a far higher sphere than that which he was able to reach—and of passions which he could with difficulty restrain, and which it was fatal to indulge. If he had been placed from infancy in the higher ranks of life, liberally educated, and employed in pursuits corresponding to his powers, the inferior portion of his nature would have lost part of its energy, while his better qualities would have assumed a decided and permanent superiority.
The Drawings of the Skull are ably executed by George Harvey, Esq., S.A.
[Cover] Text
Phrenological
DEVELOPMENT
of
Robert Burns
BY
George Combe.
Engraved & Published by W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburgh. April 1834.
REPRINTED JANUARY 1859.