It requires some little experience to tell the precise spot of this organ, it is situated in the frontal bone above the spheno-temporal suture, but its position varies with the developement; and it is somewhat covered by the temporal muscle, so that it is difficult to judge except from experience. Constructiveness is the application of the inventive faculty, and since necessity is the mother of invention, Constructiveness is that talent possessed by man for constructing and fabricating whatever his wants or his desires may originate. It is this organ that is exercised by the architect, the painter and the poet in refined life, by the artisan of humble life, by the beaver in their huts, birds in their nests and even spiders in their webs: it is a most valuable faculty: and to it we are indebted for the ability to carry out what the mere intellectual faculties have conceived: it depends for its value upon the organs wherewith it is associated, with language and Ideality, it gives poetical ability; with form, the art of sculpture; or with colour, painting—where the organ is in excess it determines to ABUSE; such as, the attempting to do what an acquaintance with philosophy would prove impossible; the construction of ingenious, but useless or even mischievous articles; the application of constructive ability in imitating valuables for base purposes; throwing away great labour on articles of curiosity, and innumerable other ways in which mis-application of ability is productive of injury: it should be remembered that ability in any way is a talent, for us to improve against the time when our Lord comes to require it of us, and we should remember that misapplication will be a more serious fault, than that of the servant who hid his lord’s talent in a napkin, or of him who buried it in the ground.
10. Acquisitiveness.
This organ is situated at the inferior range of the parietal bone. The faculty of the mind is a tendency to acquire whatever is regarded valuable and whether riches or learning or articles of vertu be the object of acquisition, there appears to be little doubt, that such a faculty is natural to the nature of man. Although such an instinctive desire presents the aspect of meanness we must in some measure look at its effects; what would England or any civilized country be, if there had never been a desire for storing up the products of intellect and philosophy,—and the wealth that enables England to send out millions in spreading the word of God over a benighted and barbarous world?—If industry were to be limited by present wants, man would always continue the creature of mere impulse; it is the faculty of acquisitiveness that directs a systematic aim at supplying the comforts and elegancies of life, and to this, accumulation is necessary: when however the pursuit of wealth becomes the chief business of life the moral sentiments are deadened, the intellect and the nobler faculties of the mind become engrossed in a debasing pursuit, the sympathy that characterizes a true christian is lost sight of. To provide for immediate wants of ourselves and those dependant upon us, to furnish the means of some repose for the body so as to enable the mind to enjoy cultivation, and to provide for the education of offspring:—to give a natural tendency for learning, for religious instruction, or the acquisition of that knowledge which is power, may be set down as the proper objects of this faculty: where the faculty of acquisitiveness is unduly exercised, and the propensity to acquire is not balanced by veneration and conscientiousness, the character is often influenced to dishonesty. In ABUSE; a miserly hoarding and total neglect of charity is evident, covetousness which St Paul condemns as idolatry, avarice and selfishness, a total disregard of distress, of conscientious principle, and of honour and duty are first and foremost;—from this organ, the weak fall a prey to the strong, the poor to the avarice of the lovers of mammon as they are called, that riches are valued more than public virtue or private integrity—that riches are pursued to the total ruin of the loftier principles of human nature, and to this prostitution of spirit and of soul is owing the difficulty of a rich man’s entering the kingdom of heaven. If there be such an instinctive tendency of the human mind, no better advice can ever be offered than that of the christian’s pattern “seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all other things shall be added unto you.” “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”—
Besides these organs of the propensities, phrenologists have imagined the existence of a peculiar instinct termed Vitativeness, or love of life: the fact is probable but requires much caution and much experience before it can be definitely decided: the existence of a few isolated facts does not necessarily include the whole human race as being like a few individuals, and there is great necessity for not increasing the number of organs without due confirmation, because the simplicity of arrangement and the plainness of the science is thereby disturbed. Of this organ Spurzheim says “I look for this organ at the basis, where the middle and posterior lobes of the brain meet each other, at the internal border of Combativeness.”
DIVISION II. INTELLECTUAL AND PERCEPTIVE FACULTIES OF THE MIND.
11. Language.
It was owing to this organ, a full prominent eye, that Dr Gall first directed his attention to a scientific investigation of the faculties of the mind. vide Page. [13]
A large developement is indicated by the prominence and depression of the eye, this appearance being produced by convolutions of the brain situated in the posterior and transverse part of the orbitary plate, pressing downward and outward in proportion to its convolutions. A full developement of this organ indicates a faculty for the acquisition and employment of words, or artificial signs, expressing our ideas; the meaning of the signs must be determined by other faculties, exactly as force or power of any kind requires to be guided and directed: from this reason may originate the very different significations given to the same abstract word, a different organization producing a difference in the meaning attached to it in spite of every effort to give an accurate definition; this will be self evident, if we merely quote the three leading features of Christianity, Faith, Hope, and Charity, and refer to different degrees of moral and intellectual elevation or turpitude, for the vague, unsatisfactory, and degraded meaning that we find frequently attached to them. Persons with a large endowment of this faculty, abound in words; in conversation they pour forth with volubility, but when excited they pour forth a torrent; this should be moderated by good sense, and appropriate language rather than verbosity will be employed in their speaking efforts as well as in their writings: when the organ is deficient, the individual wants a command of expression, he writes and speaks with great poverty of style, and when possessed of ideas is unable to clothe them in elegant or even appropriate language. The talent for, or facility of learning foreign languages originates in the same faculty, taken connectedly with the mental capacity for entering into the style and combinations of other countries. Some individuals in whom the organ is large do not necessarily possess a ready memory, which usually occurs when the faculty that apprehends the primitive idea (of which words only pronounce the name) is more than ordinarily small. The organ abused generally makes a speechifier of small worth, a talker for the mere sake of talking, who frequently loses sight of reason and subject as well as his own good sense.—Its best use is a felicity of diction in describing the sentiments and opinions of the individual so that they may be exactly comprehended by others.
12. Form.
This organ is situated in the corner of the eye next the nose, and when large there is a considerable breadth across the nose at that place: its chief use is in the accurate knowledge of form, whether of persons or objects, and disposes the mind to give a definite form to objects even when unseen: it is to this the acute observation of objects, by which means we compare them one with another, or personal identity after absence and probable change in the form of features: to this organ many distinguished sculptors and architects owe much of their excellence, as its necessary action in connection with other organs would be to express an accuracy of outline: it is to an excessive use of this organ that painters study correctness of form in drawing, and neglect colouring; useful to architects for this reason.