How to Become Rich: A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony

by William Windsor

I desire to call your attention to some examples of special ability, which are familiar enough to the experience of most of you to be accepted without argument.

There are those who are gifted in the sense of touch above their fellows, who can judge of the quality of goods in the dark. There are others blest with penetrating eyesight. Others with a sense of hearing most acute. Also those with nice discriminating sense of taste and smell. These distinctions for a long time were regarded as the five senses of man, and he was believed to have only those five avenues of perception. Phrenology, however, subdivides these and adds others, vastly increasing the number of the sources of knowledge and the springs of human action.

A great many cases of defective eyesight, so called, are in reality defective brain. The mechanism of the eye may be perfect, the retina and the optic nerve may faithfully perform their duties, but if the brain behind the eye be defective, the comprehension of the object or some of its properties is lost to the intelligence of the individual. Some people are “color blind.” Their eyes are good enough, but they don’t see colors; they comprehend no difference in the shades of different colored objects exhibited to the view. At the same time they fully comprehend the size, form, distance, etc., of the object. An examination discloses the fact that they are deficient in a portion of the brain just behind the middle of the eyebrow. Give such a man every material and brush of the painter and request him to paint a landscape and the result will be a daub. He has no sense of colors, he has no fitness for that kind of work. At the same time he may be entirely capable of a very creditable performance in drawing a picture with a pencil in white and black because that does not involve his weakness. This particular element of sense may, like all others, be only partially defective, but an examination by a competent phrenologist will disclose its exact state, whatever it may be. I once examined a man and remarked to him that he was thoroughly endowed with the qualities essential to a good locomotive engineer, except that the organ of color was slightly deficient. I remarked, “You will never experience the slightest inconvenience in distinguishing switch-lights and signals when you are in good health and sober, but a slight indigestion, or a glass of liquor, decreasing the power of your brain, would render your vision of colors unreliable and might cause a wreck, hence I advise you to keep out of the business.” The man was a railroad engineer, and admitted that he could generally distinguish colors without difficulty, but that his color sense was lost, under the conditions I described.

Those who are large in the organ of color, are artists in its appreciation, for the simple reason that they have more sense in this particular direction. On the other hand, color may be large, but appreciation of form, size, etc., may be deficient. The individual may try to paint a picture and get the colors all right, but if form is deficient his figures will be grotesque in their absurdity; or he may have good sense as to form and color, and get the sizes of his objects all wrong. Mechanical skill depends in a great measure upon these “Perceptive Faculties,” as they are called: that is, those portions of the brain that comprehend and give the ideas pertaining to the properties of material objects, such as individuality, form, size, weight, color, etc. The trained eye and hand of the blacksmith are alike directed by these faculties of the mind acting through these organs of the brain, as he moulds a piece of iron to the proper size and form to fit the horse’s foot. What folly then to expect good work, in a blacksmith shop, of a man deficient in these special senses requisite in that department of work; and as we study all trades and professions we shall find that aptitude in any line depends on the possession of superior development of the organs of the brain representing the faculties of intelligence most used and depended upon in that business.

There are those who are wonderfully gifted in the organ of calculation, the seat of the special sense of the number of things. One who has this organ large will be able to count rapidly and correctly, to add, subtract or multiply, and he understands the relation of numbers to each other, their properties, and because of his superior sense in this direction he becomes a “lightning calculator” and is regarded as a mathematical prodigy. There are others who have this sense deficient, but they may be superior in development to the mathematical prodigy in a dozen other faculties.

One may be developed in those organs which contribute to talent for music. He may have a sensitive organization, highly responsive in quality, a fair intellect, such an exquisite sense of time and tune, aided by good Constructiveness, Imitation and executive ability that he is able to produce music which charms the listening ear of thousands. If this talent is discovered in time, and he has adequate instruction and advantages, he becomes a magnificent success. Place him in the counting room, the work-shop, or on the farm and he is not in harmony with his surroundings, he is awkward and inefficient, he does poor work and but little of it, and he is regarded by his associates as an inferior person.

Musician.

Some men are wonderful in their ability to comprehend machinery, and in dexterity in the use of tools, the special sense represented by the organ of Constructiveness. They seem to be perfectly at home with a piece of new and complicated machinery in five minutes, while others will work on the same thing for hours, growing more and more bewildered, and exhibiting little or no mechanical genius whatever, literally making a botch of everything they undertake. When I was lecturing in Austin, Texas, in 1887, several gentlemen came to see me and asked if I would be willing to submit to a test. They said, “We have a man in this city who is unquestionably a genius in a certain direction, and we would like to call him out for a public examination and see if you can locate him.” I urged them to do so, at the same time remarking that that was the kind of a man I liked to get hold of. That night when I called for nominations, Mr. Geo. P. Assman was immediately elected. He came forward, and as I measured his head I said, “This man is a genius as a machinist. He has only ordinary ability in other directions, but as a machinist he is a marvel. He has thoughts on machinery far beyond the comprehension of other men, and especially in the practical handling of complicated work.” Somebody in the audience sung out at this point “You’ve got him,” and the audience broke into applause. They then informed me that he was a most celebrated locksmith and machinist whose specialty was opening combination locks on valuable safes when the combination was lost by the owners, or when the works were injured by the blasts of burglars. On one occasion he had opened a safe in New Orleans in a few minutes when the trained locksmiths of the safe factory had worked for hours and failed. He was in the right business, was regarded as a genius, and was respected and admired by a whole section of the United States simply because he employed his best element of sense.

Some men have wonderful intellectual development and are specially gifted with the ability to acquire knowledge, but they may be most wonderfully deficient in that kind of executive force which makes use of it. They are largely developed in the frontal lobe of the brain where the intellectual organs reside, but are deficient in the regions of moral and physical energy; while others are largely endowed with ambition, physical and moral energy,—the parietal lobes are large and the head rises high in the crown, and they are able to use all the knowledge they acquire. Their intellectual capacity may be limited, but they are able to put their knowledge to account, and what gems of information they possess are made to glitter by constant use. Men of the first class are always rated at less than their true value of intellectual ability; those of the second class at a greatly over-estimated premium. The first may be compared to capacious barns where knowledge is stored like hay to become musty because it is never used. I have seen hundreds of boys of this character, graduate with great honor in college (where the only criterion applied was the capacity to absorb knowledge as a sponge does water), only to be eclipsed in after years by the boys who graduated at the foot of the class, who were practically in disgrace on Commencement day. In our popular public school and collegiate system, there is too much stuffing of knowledge, and too little attention given to developing the practical sense of the student.