'At Dunlop

in a letter to his relative, Mrs. Thomson, of Edinburgh. manse,' says he, in a very dry summer, one of their nests, attached to the corner of the parlour-window, fell down, and lay on the window-sill, without any damage done either to the nest or its helpless inhabitants, four or five young ones. It was a few minutes before breakfast, when I observed the accident; and, soon after it happened, I went out, and carefully placed it on the top of a cut hedge, and I waited to see the event. It was pleasant to see the young ones fed at proper intervals, and, at the same time, a great number of other swallows jointly and busily employed, in a warm summer morning, in building a new nest in the same place with the former; some of them bringing clay, straws, &c.; others making use of these materials; others dipping themselves into an open well, and plashing the walls of the nest; and all of them cheering one another to the useful work. In two hours the new nest was completely finished, and then the young ones were carried through the air under the wings of one, sometimes two, old swallows, and safely placed in their lodging; after which the noise and cheering of the troop ceased.'" Dr. Poole also stated to me, that a cat having seized a young sparrow, a flock of these birds perceiving it, attacked the cat, fastened on its back, pecked and flapped till they made it quit its prey, and rescued the intended victim. This happened in a garden behind St. John-street, Edinburgh, and was witnessed by a neighbour of Dr. Poole's, who communicated the circumstances to him. Dogs also are known to precipitate themselves into water, to save persons in danger of being drowned; and they attack with fury assassins who assail their masters.

The activity of this sentiment is productive of so much benefit in society, that its cultivation ought to be specially attended to in the training of children. The experience of the teachers of infant-schools shows how much may be done in adding to its energy.*

I have mentioned before, that stimulating liquors, by exciting the organs, give energy to the feelings or propensities which depend on them for the means of manifestation. Some individuals become excessively profuse when intoxicated. They would then give the world away; or, if they had the power, they would create a new one, in which every individual should enjoy infinite happiness. On the principle that intoxication can never create any feeling, I am inclined to think that such persons have naturally a large endowment of Benevolence, the organ of which is stimulated to this great activity by strong potations. This, however, is only a conjecture.

The organ is liable to excessive excitement by disease. Dr. Gall mentions the case of a hussar, who had always manifested great benevolence of disposition, and subsequently became insane. He gave away all his clothes, and left himself absolutely naked; he never ceased repeating that he wished to make every one happy, and he introduced into all his projects of beneficence the Holy Trinity. In his head the organs of Benevolence and Veneration were extremely developed. Idiots in whom this organ is large are good-natured and harmless; while those in whom it is small, if Destructiveness be large, are mischievous and wicked.

The existence of Benevolence, as an innate sentiment of the human mind, is distinctly recognised by Lord Bacon in one of his Essays. "I take goodness," says he, "in this sense, the affecting of the weal of men, which is that the Grecians call philanthropia; and the word humanity (as it is used) is a little too light to express it. Goodness I call the habit, and goodness of nature the inclination. This, of all virtues and dignities of the mind, is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and, without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than * See Phren. Journ., vi., 129, 428.

1

kind of vermin.... The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man, insomuch that if it issue not toward men, it will take unto other living creatures; as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, who, nevertheless, are kind to beasts, give alms to dogs and birds; insomuch that, as Busbechius reporteth, a Christian boy in Constantinople had like to have been stoned for gagging, in a waggishness, a long-billed fowl." The Scotch metaphysicians in general admit the existence of this sentiment; but Hobbes, and many other metaphysical writers, who resolve all our actions into selfishness, deny it. Dr. Thomas Brown successfully and beautifully answers the objection, that we are selfish even in our feelings of good will. "The analysis of love," says he, "as a complex feeling, presents to us always at least two elements; a vivid delight in the contemplation of the object, and a desire of good to that object.... Though we cannot, then, when there is no interfering passion, think of the virtues of others without pleasure, and must, therefore, in loving virtue, love what is by its own nature pleasing, the love of the virtue which cannot exist without the pleasure, is surely an affection very different from the love of the mere pleasure existing, if it had been possible for it to exist, without the virtue-a pleasure that accompanies the virtue, only as the soft or brilliant colouring of nature flows from the great orb above-a gentle radiance that is delightful to our eyes, indeed, and to our heart, but which leads our eye upward to the splendid source from which it flows, and our heart, still higher, to that Being by whom the sun was made."*

Mr. Robert Cox has published, in the tenth volume of The Phrenological Journal, p. 1, an elaborate essay on the "laws of action of Benevolence;" in which he adduces a variety of facts and arguments, to show that the power and activity of this organ are increased by the agreeable or pleasurable action of the organs of the other mental powers, in the same way as Destructiveness receives excitement when their action is disagreeable. Hence he regards happiness as conducive to generosity and sweetness of temper, and misery as tending to render the disposition sour and irritable; and from these principles practical results of great importance are deduced.

14. VENERATION.

THIS organ is situated in the middle of the coronal region of the brain, at the bregma or fontanel of anatomists. The figures represent it large and small.

Dr. Gall gives the following account of the discovery of this organ: His father's family consisted of ten children, who all received the same *Lecture 59, vol. iii., p. 241.

education, but their talents and dispositions were very dissimilar. One of his brothers manifested from infancy a strong tendency toward religion. "Ses jouets étaient des vases d'église qu'il sculptoit lui-même, des chasubles et des surplis qu'il faisait avec du papier." He was constantly engaged in prayer and in saying mass; and when obliged to be absent from church, he spent his time in ornamenting and gilding a crucifix of wood. His father had intended him for a merchant, but he himself disliked that occupation, because, said he, it exposed him to the necessity of lying. At the age of twenty-three years he abandoned merchandise; and having lost all hope of being then able to pursue the studies requisite for the church, he fled from his father's house and became a hermit. His father at length allowed him to study at the end of five years he took orders, and continued, till the period of his death, to live in the exercise of devotion and the practice of penance.

Dr. Gall farther remarked, that, in schools, some of the children took no interest in religious instruction, while others received it with avidity; also, that those individuals in the classes who voluntarily devoted themselves to the church, were either studious, pious, virtuous, and honourable young men, or idlers of the worst description, indolent, and totally destitute of talent. The latter, he observes, obviously had no other aim than that of living at the expense of their fellow-citizens; while the former felt a lively interest in the vocation to which they aspired. commendable feeling sprang up in them, says he, nobody knew how; and it certainly was not attributable to example or education, nor to the circumstances in which they had been placed; for many of them had embraced the clerical profession, even contrary to the intention of their parents and guardians. These facts convinced him that the disposition to religion is innate.

This

At a later period, no sooner had he fixed his attention on some of the primitive qualities of the mind, than he recollected these observations made in his youth, and immediately examined the heads of persons eminent for devotion. He visited the churches of every sect, and particularly observed the heads of individuals who prayed with the greatest fervour, or who were the most completely absorbed in their religious contemplations. The result was the establishment of the part of the brain in question as the organ of Veneration.

Catholic countries afford particularly favourable opportunities for such observations. Dr. Bright, a traveller in Lower Hungary, informs us, that, in Vienna, "the churches are almost constantly open, and enter them when you will, servants, who have been sent on errands, are seen kneeling before the alters or the images, with their baskets or parcels by their sides. Thus prayer, by its frequency, becomes a habit and recreation, rather than the performance of a duty; and I have often been truly astonished to observe, in the coldest weather, little children, when far from the restraints of their parents, fall down upon their knees before the images which adorn many of the corners of the streets and passages in Vienna, and there remain fixed for several minutes, as in serious devotion."* I have observed similar facts in Catholic cities on the continent. The function of the faculty is to produce the sentiment of Veneration in general; or an emotion of profound and reverential respect, on perceiving an object at once great and good. It is the source of natural religion, and of that tendency to worship a superior power, which manifests itself in almost every tribe of men yet discovered. The faculty, however, pro. duces merely an emotion, and does not form ideas of the object to which adoration should be directed; and hence, if no revelation have reached the individual, and if the understanding be extremely limited, the unfor* Pages 43, 44.

tunate being may worship the genius of the storm; the sun, as the source of light, heat, and vegetable life; or, if more debased in intellect, brutes, and stocks, and stones :

"Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind,

Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind."

The organ is large in King Robert Bruce, who, it is mentioned in history, was strongly alive to religious feelings, and ordered his heart to be carried to the Holy Land, because he had not been able to fulfil a vow to visit it in person.

This faculty, when unenlightened, may lead to every kind of religious absurdity; as worshipping beasts, and stocks, and stones. The negroes, American Indians, and even the Hindoos, have a poor intellectual developement compared with Europeans, and their superstitions are more gross. Socrates did not assent to the popular religious errors of the Greeks, and in the ancient busts of him he is represented with a splendid forehead.*

It is large also in the negroes, who are extremely prone to superstition. It has been objected, that, if an organ and faculty of Veneration exist, revelation was unnecessary. But Dr. Gall has well answered, that the proposition ought to be exactly reversed: for unless a nataral capacity of feeling religious emotion had been previously bestowed, revelation would have been as unavailing to man as it would be to the lower animals; while, if a mere general sentiment of devotion, or an instinctive, but blind, tendency to worship, which Veneration truly is, was given, nothing was more reasonable than to add instruction how it ought to be directed. Dr. Gall observes, farther, that the existence of the organ is an indirect proof of the existence of God. Destructiveness is implanted in the mind, and animals exist around us, to be killed for our nourishment: Adhesiveness and Philoprogenitiveness are given, and friends and children are provided as objects on whom they may be exercised: Benevolence is conferred on us, and the poor and unhappy, on whom it may shed its soft influence, are everywhere present with us: in like manner, the instinctive tendency to worship is implanted in the mind, and, conformably to these analogies of nature, we may reasonably infer that a God exists whom we may adore. As, however, Veneration has likewise objects on earth, this argument cannot be regarded as conclusive.

The organ is possessed by all men, but in different degrees by different persons and, on the principle that the natural power of experiencing an emotion bears a proportion cæteris paribus to the size of its organ, every sane individual will be naturally capable of joining in religious worship; but the glow of devotional feeling experienced by each will be greater or less in intensity, according to the developement of this part of his brain. The difference in the strength of the emotion is certain, independently of Phrenology; so that this science only reveals the relation between its intensity and the size of the organ.

Dr. Gall mentions, that, in the portraits of saints remarkable for devotional feeling, this organ is represented as large, and that the same configuration of head has been given by the ancient artists to their high priests. It is large in the portraits of Constantine, Marcus Aurelius, St. Ambrose, Charles I. of England, and Malebranche. In the portrait of St. John, in the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci, on the succeeding page, it and Benevolence are represented as very large.

It is also greatly developed in philosophers and poets who are distinguished for piety, as in Newton, Milton, and Klopstock; while it is flat in the head of Spinosa, who professed atheism. The same configuration is found in the heads of Christ represented by Raphael. In these the

* A copy of his bust may be seen in the Phrenological Society's Hall.

parts behind the ear, or the organs common to man and the lower animals, are small; whereas the organs situated in the forehead and in the coronal region, connected with intellect and the moral sentiments, are very large. This organization indicates great intellectual penetration, with exalted Benevolence and Veneration. Dr. Gall puts the question, Has this divine form of head been invented, or may we presume that it is a faithful copy of the original? It is possible, says he, that the artists may have imitated the heads of the most virtuous, just, and benevolent men whom they could find, and thence drawn the character of the head of Christ. In this case the observation of the artists coincides with that of Dr. Gall -a circumstance which supposes either a kind of presentiment of organology on their part, or an accuracy of observation scarcely admissible. He considers it more probable that the general type, at least, of the head of Christ has been transmitted to us. St. Luke was a painter, and how should he fail to preserve the features of his Master? It is certain that this form of the head of Christ is of a very high antiquity. It is found in the most ancient pictures and specimens of mosaic work. The Gnostics of the second century possessed images of Christ and of St. Paul; hence Dr. Gall concludes, that neither Raphael nor any other artist has invented this admirable configuration.*

The metaphysicians in general do not treat of Veneration as an original emotion. They trace the belief in God to the perceptions of the understanding. We perceive order, beauty, harmony, power, wisdom, and goodness in the works of creation, and infer from these qualities that a supreme creating and directing Mind exists. In this view the phrenolo*Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, tome v., p. 389. See also a Brief Notice of some Ancient Coins and Medals, as illustrating the Progress of Christianity, by the Rev. R. Walsh, LL.D. Chaplain to the Embassy at Constantinople.