BY JOSEPH C. NEAL.
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It is inconvenient to have to bear with personal deficiencies—troublesome and disheartening not to possess all the senses and the faculties which are demanded to enable man to compete with his fellows upon equal terms; and it requires philosophy that we do not repine when we find ourselves in any respect, either physical or mental, compelled to stand aside in the unpleasant attitude of being an exception to the general rule. It is true that the march of science is able, to a considerable extent, to obviate corporeal default. Eyes are constructed so well as to deceive the eye, although the constructed eye is not yet so perfect that we shall hope to see with it far into the opacity of mill-stones. Legs are manufactured more symmetrically beautiful than the majority of real legs; and the skillful artist will, if you are only tall enough, modulate you into a figure which might put an Apollo to the blush. But the steam leg, in its swiftness of locomotion, is as yet no more than a dream of the visionary; and we may pad ourselves into muscularity as much as we please, without gaining a particle of power.
We are aware that by the aid of spectacles he who would otherwise be always stumbling over the dog, and tripping in contact with other people’s feet, periling his precious countenance by rude collisions with every species of obstacle, may contrive to see his way through the world in comparative clearness. But science has not perhaps succeeded to the same extent in the work of metaphysical regeneration; nor do we know that any man’s geese have as yet been fully converted into swans, though he may think them progressive creatures in the scale of ornithology, and likely to reach a higher position than has been attained by former members of the race. It is theoretical, we learn, with the phrenologists, and probably practical also, to a greater extent than the world is willing to admit, that there are processes whereby the neglects of dame nature may at least be partially counteracted and repaired, so that “bumps” shall be raised, where depressions exist, and some degree of potency be secured in those “organs” which were originally faint and feeble; just as the muscular fibre is strengthened by exercise, and as our agile capabilities are increased by a judicious practice of the thews and sinews on which activity depends.
Now, while we hope for the sake of humanity in general, that these assumptions will fully bear the test of experiment, it must yet be conceded that education fails somewhat in this regard; and that in thinking, as in dancing, much depends upon the configuration of mind and of body with which we were endowed from the outset. The phrenologists are right in the belief that training has its advantages; but there must be a basis on which that training is to proceed, or the result will be such as cannot fail to lead to serious disappointment.
For example, and in the way of parenthesis, it would be a parlous difficulty to teach the innate craven to plunge valiantly onward at the desperate head of a forlorn hope, or to hurl himself recklessly upon the sharp and bristling array of a forest of hostile bayonets. You may debate the question if you are so inclined, insisting on it vehemently that, in honor’s view, there is no essential difference in a case like this, between a glorious death and the triumph of a victory, and that the most disastrous of the two is infinitely preferable to an age without a name, yet, our life on it, it will prove that your friend of the weak nerve, and of the nonchivalrous temperament, is not to be talked, by the most persuasive, into any relish for cold steel, or into any decided fancy for the reception into himself of certain intrusive pellets of hot lead. Nay, Ciceronian eloquence would be wasted in the endeavor to induce him to come to the conclusion that it is much better for him to be extended face upward on the ensanguined plain, after the fashion of the “grinning honor” of Sir Walter Blount, than to find himself sound in body, but without a single sprig of laurel to his name, snugly enfolded in the blankets awaiting a call to breakfast. Nature, you will observe, has denied to him the perception of the romantic and the poetical. He has no desire to be posthumous to his own reputation. To such a one, the hard knock is simply a hard knock, unmitigated by transcendental embellishment; and renown has no part in the plain arithmetic of his calculations. He values life by its admeasurements—according to the number and length of its days. So give it up at once—there is no sun—of Austerlitz or of any other place—that can ripen this man into a warrior, or tempt him to enter into fierce competition for the wreath of glory.
And thus—musically—we find that people “without an ear,” do not often take the lead in operatic performances; or, if they do participate, that the operatic performances are not particularly benefitted by their interference. The querulous and fretful—do they acquire the resources of patient fortitude? Not often, so far as our experience extends; and we do not know that the simpleton, school him ever so much, is likely to obtain distinction for himself as a philosopher—nay, he is often furthest from it at the very moment when he imagines himself a great deal wiser than his neighbors.
Such as these, as well as others who might be mentioned, have no foundation on which the deficient “bump” is to be elevated; and, as a general rule, it is just as well to abandon as a “bad job” all effort to render them distinguished in the display of those faculties which form no part of their primary constitution. The superstructure that may be raised on an insecure soil, must of necessity be weak and “shackling;” and all the military education that can be bestowed on the poltroon, will not avail to prevent an ill-timed manifestation of that species of plumage which obtains ignoble renown under the epithet of the “white feather.” It has been in him probably from his birth, that he must locomote in a direction contrary to that in which “the nettle danger” uprears its ugly front; and, under these circumstances, the impulse to retrograde travel will burst all the artificial and conventional bonds which have been devised to drive it into the teeth of the battery. It was the design of nature that our friend should run; and who will venture to stand antagonistical to nature?
It is a mere flight of fancy, no doubt, into the illimitable regions of hypothesis, but we should very much like to see the day when a Bumpological art shall be matured, and a practical science of Organology be brought into operation. Then there will be some use in the knocks about the sconce, which are now so wofully wasted; and when we shall be driven into frenzies, the manifestations of our wrath will become really beneficial to those on whom they may chance to be bestowed. Then we should find the rationale of corporal punishment—a thing not to be whirled about in random kicks and cuffings; but to be so applied as to develop that very bump, a deficiency of which, in the offending party, has so raised our vengeful ire. Such, perchance, is the latent reason why we are so anxious to maltreat those who are not disposed to obey our behests, as well as the true motive why it is an impulse of our nature to chastise the enemy. Education would thus be revolutionized, and the Art of War would be brought within the range of the directly useful sciences.
But to descend at once to the facts that are before us, it is a blessed thought to believe that by a wise system of tuition, the small uncertain spark of a virtue may be breathed into a steady flame; and if, infirm of purpose as so many are, they could be strengthened into a surer aim by due attention to the feebler parts of character, none, we are sure, could be found to regret it; and so we are, and we intend to be, full of respect to this phrenological idea, which might, we think, be somewhat more carefully engrafted upon systems of educational improvement, so that the mere appeal to the memory might leave room for the analysis and development of the moral being.