Parallel to the posterior part of Firmness lies Heroism, or Hardihood, next to which come Health and Oratory, then Approbativeness and Playfulness, running into Sense of Honor and Magnanimity. Approbativeness, Playfulness, Honor, Magnanimity and Self-sufficiency might as one group be almost included in the old conception of Approbativeness. Magnanimity is a faculty closely akin to Self-esteem or Pride, but belongs more to interior sentiment and is less external or demonstrative.
All of these new organs and faculties have been discovered, demonstrated and studied since 1835, my first discoveries, which included a great portion of the whole, having been made by the cranioscopic method of Gall and Spurzheim, in which I found no difficulty in detecting the errors of my predecessors, and discovering the truths which are so patent to one who seeks them. But alas, the dispassionate search for truth is the rarest virtue on earth. Even Gall himself had not enough of this to recognize the discoveries of Spurzheim. Nor had Spurzheim enough to get rid of some of the palpable errors of Gall, such as placing Acquisitiveness in the temples, Mirthfulness in the philosophic group, and reversing the true positions of Tune and Constructiveness, extending the latter into the middle lobe. Spurzheim, however, was a better and more faithful observer than Gall, and greatly improved the science of Phrenology, though he never realized that from the brain we may develop a complete Anthropology.
This hasty enumeration of the psychic portion of the demonstrated functions of the brain, which my predecessors failed to reach, will give the reader some idea of the magnitude of the task to discover all this, to establish its relations to anatomy, and, I may add, to cerebral mathematics, and to organize the whole into a harmonious philosophy, which demonstrates itself, when understood, by a divine perfection which is beyond the power of human invention to originate.
Perhaps some readers may feel that I should have introduced the subject by systematic demonstrations and narratives of experiments. I avoid this because such narratives would not be attractive to readers who are eager to reach a valuable truth, and do not wish to go through the labors of discovery. Nor am I at all concerned about demonstrations. If I have unveiled eternal truths, my successors, if they are faithful students, will be compelled to see what I have seen, and to verify my observations.
I simply KNOW the truth of what I present, from several reasons, each one of which is sufficient in itself.
1. Experimental.—As an experimental investigation I have many thousand times excited the organs of the brain in intelligent persons and made them realize or show the effects as I stimulated the intellect, the emotions, the passions or the physiological functions, so as to bring out Memory, Intuition, Somnolence, Spirituality, Love, Religion, Hope to ecstasy, Pride, Arrogance, Combativeness, Avarice, Hunger, Theft, Insanity, Sleep, Mirth, Grief, etc., etc., and the organs that change the action of the heart, the muscular strength and the bodily temperature. These experiments have been made before great numbers of enlightened persons and have been largely repeated by my students. Manifestly I cannot speak with any less confidence of Anthropology than a chemist does of chemistry, when for forty-five years, I have ever been able and willing to demonstrate its principles by experiments on intelligent persons, changing their physical strength, their circulation and their mental faculties.
2. Sensitive.—I have felt nearly all the functions of the brain in various degrees of excitement in my own person, and know the positions of the organs as well as the gymnast knows the position of the muscles in which he produces fatigue. My physical sensibility has been so acute as to recognize by local sensations at all times the degree of activity in any portion of the brain, manifested by local warmth and sensibility, by a sanguineous pressure, by vivid sensations in the scalp, with erection of the hair, or by aching fatigue, or by irritations and tenderness in the scalp; or in case of inactivity by the entire absence of sensation, or in case of obstruction by a distinct feeling of oppression.
3. Psychometric.—I have explored every portion of the brain with care and minuteness by the psychometric method, even tracing the convolutions and their anfractuosities, and observing from point to point how beautifully and harmoniously the innumerable functions blend with each other; how the different portions of a convolution vary, and how the different conditions of the brain and different degrees of excitement modify the results; and these investigations have been carried on for years, until results were clearly established and over and over confirmed by psychometry, by experiment, and by consciousness.
4. Mathematical.—The development of so positive a science enabled me to establish certain mathematical or Geometric laws of cerebral action, concerning the direction and mode in which all faculties act upon the mind and body, which laws constitute the Basic Philosophy of Anthropology, the highest generalization of science. These laws constitute a compact system of science, lying at the basis of all psychology, as the bony skeleton is the basis of the human form. These laws being easily demonstrated, and giving great clearness and systematic beauty to the whole science, are alone a sufficient demonstration. They constitute the science of Pathognomy.
5. Cranioscopy.—In describing characters or constitutions, the new system is continually tested and demonstrated. All whom I have taught find, when they test it, that, in its applications by cranioscopy, the results invariably confirm the accuracy of the science.