We have stated that we are candid enquirers into the nature of phrenology; we believe we are so; and if the facts shown in this paper are favourable to its pretensions, the fault is not ours, but nature’s; we admire and we adopt the motto of one of its lights, “res non verba quæso.”
It would have been as easy for us to seek for, and to set forth, opposing arguments and facts; and we should have done it in the spirit of the motto just quoted; but as the vast majority of men of learning, and almost all writers, are opposed to phrenology—as it is assailed every day by argument and ridicule—as its opponents are rather uproarious whenever it is seriously mentioned—we deem it but fair audire alteram partem.
In plain truth, we are all, to a certain extent, phrenologists; and the disciples of Gall and Spurzheim have no right to claim for their masters the credit of originality, or for themselves the credit of peculiar and new views of nature. No age, since Aristotle, has been without its philosophers, who pointed out the brain as the organ by which the mind carried on its operations; and it is now generally admitted to be its primary and essential instrument.
A shrewd and practical English philosopher, and an uncompromising anti-phrenologist, writes thus: “Mind, connected with body, can only acquire knowledge slowly through the bodily organs of sense, and more or less perfectly according as these organs and the central brain are perfect. A human being, born blind and deaf, and therefore remaining dumb, as in the noted case of the boy Mitchell, grows up closely to resemble an automaton; and an originally misshapen or deficient brain causes idiocy for life. Childhood, maturity, dotage, which have such differences of bodily powers, have corresponding differences of mental faculties; and as no two bodies, so no two minds, in their external manifestations, are quite alike. Fever, or a blow on the head, will change the most gifted individual into a maniac, cause the lips of virgin innocence to utter the most revolting obscenity, and those of pure religion to speak horrible blasphemy; and most cases of madness and eccentricity can now be traced to a peculiar state of the brain.”
What the nature and the powers of the human soul may be, we know not, nor can we know, until it is disembodied and disenthralled; until this mortal shall put on immortality, and time and space shall be no more; then, doubtless, the power of ubiquity, and a searching vision to which the diameter of the globe will present no more of an obstacle than does the thinnest glass to the mortal eye, will be among the least of the spiritual powers; but, until then, if we would study the nature of the spirit, we must consider it as trammeled by, and operating through, a corporeal organisation.
The difference between the vast majority of thinking men and ultra-phrenologists, we believe to be narrowed down to this; all admit that the spirit of man, manifesting itself through corporeal organisation, is influenced and modified by, and indeed entirely dependent upon, the nature and state of that organisation, particularly of the brain and nervous system; while phrenologists go farther, and say, that according to the length and breadth of certain bundles of fibres in certain compartments of the brain does the spirit manifest its different faculties with different degrees of activity and power.
We all of us admit, that even the giant mind of a Newton, or a Napoleon, would struggle in vain against the finger of an infant pressing upon the brain; but phrenologists maintain, that as the finger should be pressed upon one or another organ, so would one or another of the mental powers be immediately affected. Perhaps the truth is beyond the extremes; and while we should strive to attain the juste milieu, we should not be deterred by any fears of what may be the inferences from searching for truth in observations upon nature.
S. G. H.
[4] This article is copied from the “American Monthly Magazine” of April, 1838. It is a valuable document, on account of the facts it contains respecting the size of the heads of many of our distinguished men. These facts accord most strikingly with a fundamental law in phrenology, viz. that “size, other things being equal, is a measure of power.” We would, however, state that the conditions involved in the phrase—“other things being equal”—are of the greatest importance, and should always be taken into the account, in judging of character on phrenological principles. The above article is spiced in several places with considerable humour and pleasantry, exhibiting a very fair, if not a large, organ of “Mirthfulness” in the writer. We would simply remark, that the article was prepared for the magazine by a gentleman very favourably known to the public, particularly for his labours in behalf of science and humanity.—Ed.