How to Read Human Nature: Its Inner States and Outer Forms

by William Walker Atkinson

III. That each faculty or propensity has a special organ in the brain.

IV. The size of the brain (the quality being equal) is the true measure of power.

V. There are several groups of faculties, and each group is represented by organs located in the same region of the brain.

VI. The relative size of each organ results from the activity of its appropriate faculty.

VII. The size of the organ is indicated by the appearance and size of the skull immediately over the region of the organ.

VIII. The Quality and Temperament of the organization determine the degree of vigor, activity, and endurance of the mental powers.

Modern psychology and biology claim to have disproven many of the phrenological contentions, while other lines of investigation have given us other theories to account for the phenomena first noted by the phrenologists. Some investigators of brain development and action hold that while certain mental states manifest in outer form on portions of the skull, the phenomenon is due to the action of the cranial muscles rather than to the fact of the localization of special faculties—that each mental state is associated with certain actions on the part of certain cranial muscles which in turn exert a modifying effect upon the shape and size of the skull.

As Erbes states it "the effect the scheme of cranial muscles have had and still have upon the conformation of the skull, and, consequently, had in determining the location of those areas and in giving brain and mind a character approximately identical from end to end of the scale of living things possessing the cerebro-spinal nervous system. In so far as the neural matter is dependent upon the cranial muscles—aside from the sensory stimuli—so far, likewise are the psychic manifestations, through tongue or limb, modified by variations in those muscles that, after their creative task is done, assume a vasomotor control over their respective areas." The same writer also says: "The cerebral mass owes its location and subsequent expansion, moreover, in a measure that mind owes its character, primarily to the action of the muscles attached to and lying upon its peripheral covering, the skull; these same muscles thereafter, through exercising a cerebral vasomotor control, act in the nature of keys for calling the evolved dependent brain areas into play, singly and en masse."

Others have held that the development of certain areas of the surface of the skull is due to peculiar neural or nervous, activities having their seat in certain parts of the brain adjacent to their appropriate area of the skull, but these theories fail to explain the nature of the relation between the mind, brain and the "nerve centres" aforesaid.

These several authorities, and others, however, agree upon the fact that certain areas of the brain are associated in some way with certain mental states; and that these brain areas register their relative activity upon the areas of the skull adjacent thereto; and that the activity and power of each brain area, or faculty, is denoted by the size of the associated skull-area. Thus, the outward facts claimed by phrenology are admitted, while their theories of cause are disputed.