Dr. Spurzheim altogether explodes the doctrine of a difference in constitutional temperaments, the sanguine, the phlegmatic, and so on; because this difference, being general, is not consistent with his special organs. He also denies unequivocally the doctrine of the association of ideas, which Des Cartes’s ‘tracks in the brain’ were meant to explain. One would think this alone decisive against his book. Indeed the capacity of association, possessed in a greater or less degree, seems to be the great discriminating feature between man and man. But what organ of association there can be between different local organs it is difficult to conjecture; and Dr. Spurzheim was right in boldly denying a truth which he could not reconcile with his mechanical and incongruous theory.
‘There are persons who maintain that in the highest degree of magnetic influence, the manifestations of the soul are independent of the organization.’ Page 122.
What! have we animal magnetism in the dance too? Would our great physiologist awe us into belief by bringing into the field quackery greater than his own? Then it is time to be on our guard.
‘We find sanguine and bilious individuals, who are intellectual or stupid, meek or impetuous; we may observe phlegmatics of a bold, quarrelsome, and imperious character. In short, the doctrine of the temperaments, as applied to the indication of determinate faculties, is not more sure or better founded, than divination by the hands, feet, skin, hair, ears, and similar physiognomical signs.’ Page 128.
That is, red-haired people, for instance, have not a certain general character. After that, I will not believe a word the learned author says upon his bare authority.
Dr. Spurzheim with great formality devotes a number of sections to prove that the several senses alone, without any other faculty or principle of thought and feeling, do not account for the moral and intellectual faculties. ‘There needs no ghost to tell us that.’ In his mode of entering upon this part of his subject, the Doctor seems to have been aware of the old maxim—Divide et impera—Distinguish and confound!
‘We have still to examine whether sight produces any moral sentiment or intellectual faculty. It is a common opinion that the art of painting is the result of sight; and it is true that eyes are necessary to perceive colours, as the ears are to perceive sounds and tones; but the art of painting does not consist in the perception of colours, any more than music in the perception of sounds. Sight, therefore, and the faculty of painting are not at all in proportion. The sight of many animals is more perfect than that of man, but they do not know what painting is; and in mankind the talent of painting cannot be measured by the acuteness of sight. Great painters never attribute their talent to their eyes. They say, it is not the eye, but the understanding, which perceives the harmony of colours.’ Page 158.
This is well put, and quite true; that is, it is the mind alone that perceives the relation and connexion between all our sensations. Thus the impression of the line bounding one side of the face does not perceive or compare itself with the impression of the line forming the other side of the face, but it is the mind or understanding (by means indeed of the eye) that perceives and compares the two impressions together. But neither will an organ of painting answer this purpose, unless this separate organ includes a separate mind, with a complete workshop and set of offices to execute all the departments of judgment, taste, invention, &c. i.e. to compare, analyse, and combine its own particular sensations. But neither will this answer the end. For either all these must be included under one, and exhibit themselves in the same proportions wherever the organ exists, which is not the fact; or if they are distinct and independent of one another, then they cannot be expressed by any one organ. Dr. Spurzheim has, in a subsequent part of his work, provided for this objection, and divided the Organ of Sight into five or six subdivisions; such as, the Organ of Form, the Organ of Colour, the Organ of Weight, the Organ of Space, and God knows how many more. This is evading and at the same time increasing the difficulty. Thus. The best draughtsmen are not observed to be always the best colourists, Raphael and Titian for example. There must therefore be a new division of the Organ of Sight into (at least) the two divisions of Form and Colour. Now it is not to be supposed that these organs are thus separated merely for separation’s sake, but that there is something in the quality or texture of the substance of the brain in each organ, peculiarly fitted for each different sort of impression, and by an excess of quantity producing an excess of faculty. The size alone of the organ cannot account for the difference of the faculty, without this other condition of quality annexed. Suppose the distinguishing quality of the organ of form to be a certain tenaciousness; that of the organ of colour to be a certain liquid softness in the finer particles of the brain. Now a greater quantity of the medullary substance of a given texture and degree of softness will produce the organ of colour: but then will not a greater degree of this peculiar softness or texture (whatever it is) with the same quantity of substance, produce an extraordinary degree of faculty equally? That is, we make the fineness or quality of the nerves, brain, mind, atone for the want of quantity, or get the faculty universally without the organ: Q. E. D. Dr. Spurzheim does not make an organ of melody and an organ of harmony; yet he ought, if every distinct operation of the mind or senses requires a distinct local organ, and if his whole system is not merely arbitrary. Farther, one part of painting is expression, namely, the power of connecting certain feelings of pleasure and pain with certain lines and movements of face; that is, there ought to be an organ of expression, or an organ, in the first place, of pleasure and pain—which Dr. Spurzheim denies—these being general and not specific manifestations of the mind; and in the second place, an organ for associating the impressions of one organ with those of all the rest—of which the Doctor also denies the existence or even possibility. His is quite a new constitution of the human mind.
‘Finally, every one feels that he thinks by means of the brain.’ Page 165.
When it was urged before, that every one thinks that he feels by means of the heart, Dr. Spurzheim scouted this sort of proof as vulgar and ridiculous, it being then against himself.