CONTENTS. French, On the Importance of including Developement of Brain as an Element in Statistical Inquiries into the manifestations of the Animal, Moral, II. Objections to Classification of the Faculties (referred to in page 106), 477 IV. Testimonials laid before Lord Glenelg relative to Convicts sent 482 Chaucer, head, (1) 244 Nerve, magnified, view of, (2) 65 Cingalese, skulls, 87, 135, 144, 194, 196 New Hollander, skull, Dobson, William, head, (1) 52, 176, 426 Esquimaux, skull, * The figures marked (1) are copied from engraved portraits, &c, in general circulation; the others, with the exception of those marked (2), are drawn from skulls, or casts from nature, in the collection of the Phrenological Society. These figures of skulls and casts are drawn as nearly as possible on the same scale, the dimensions being reduced to one-fifth of those of the real subjects, except in the case of the figures on pages 80 and 82. The measurements in the Tables on pp. 94 and 436 are taken by inserting the point of the leg of a pair of callipers into the hole of the ear, and bringing the point of the other leg to the centre of the situation of the organ on the skull. The distance noted in the tables is the length of a straight line extending from one of these points to the other. In reducing the skulls to a flat surface in the drawings, the measurements could not be made to correspond exactly with those given in the tables, because the lines represented are different The approximation, however, is as great as possible, and one principle is followed in all the drawings, so that relatively to each other they are correct. SYSTEM OF PHRENOLOGY. INTRODUCTION. PHRENOLOGY (derived from the Greek words pony, mind and λoyos, discourse) professes to be a system of Philosophy of the Human Mind, founded on the physiology of the brain. It was first offered to public consideration on the continent of Europe in 1796, but in Britain was almost unheard of till the year 1815. It has met with strenuous support from some individuals, and determined opposition from others; while the great body of the public remain uninstructed as to its merits. On this account it may be useful to present, in an introductory form, 1st, A short notice of the reception which other discoveries have met with on their first announcement; 2dly, A brief outline of the principles involved in Phrenology; 3dly, An inquiry into the presumptions for and against these principles, founded on the known phenomena of human nature; and, 4thly, An historical sketch of the discovery of the organs of the mind. I shall follow this course, not with a view of convincing the reader that Phrenology is true, (because nothing short of patient study and extensive personal observation can produce this conviction,) but for the purpose of presenting him with motives to prosecute the investigation for his own satisfaction. First, then-one great obstacle to the reception of a discovery is the difficulty which men experience in at once parting with old notions which have been instilled into their minds from infancy, and become the stock. of their understandings. Phrenology has encountered this impediment, but not in a greater degree than other discoveries which have preceded it. Mr. Locke, in speaking of the common reception of new truths, says: "Who ever, by the most cogent arguments, will be prevailed with to disrobe himself at once of all his old opinions and pretences to knowledge and learning, which with hard study he hath all his time been labouring for, and turn himself out stark naked in quest afresh of new notions? All the arguments that can be used will be as little able to prevail as the wind did with the traveller to part with his cloak, which he held only the faster."* Professor Playfair, in his historical notice of discoveries in physical science, published in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, observes, that "in every society there are some who think themselves interested to maintain things in the condition wherein they have found them. The considerations are indeed sufficiently obvious, which, in the moral and political world, tend to produce this effect, and to give a stability to human institutions, often so little proportionate to their real value or to their general utility. Even in matters purely intellectual, and in which * Locke On the Human Understanding, b. iv., c. 20, sect. 11. |