The Principles of Phrenology (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Principles of Phrenology

There are many men who discover that error needs no recommendation, but that truth is a medicine which must be concealed in honey before the public will swallow it. They inform the philanthropist, that if he tell mankind what it really is that he is teaching, they will spurn it; and that as he is doing the cause of truth a service, by expounding his doctrines, he is quite justified in concealing their real nature, and what he believes to be their practical deductions. They will placidly state, that Phrenology, for example, has enough of prejudice to overcome, without its expounder increasing its force by openly disregarding the religious objections which it encounters, and that, for the very sake of the progress of truth, prejudice ought not to be sub verted, if, by any other process, he can procure audience to his principles. This is, soften it as we may, moral swindling, and is directly calculated to retard, instead of assisting, the progress of knowledge. The opponents of Phrenology have not, as in the case of a candid and honest teacher, to attempt its refutation by the standard of truth, but simply to discuss the question of its conformity with received doctrines. The temporising philosopher has, to avoid Offending public prejudice, yielded the palm of authority to the dicta of the bigot, and confined himself to an assertion of the harmony of his discoveries with the regnant creed; and the fanatic, in turn, lets the truth or falsehood of his antagonist's theory alone, and tries it by the standard to which he himself has referred the issue of the controversy. Thus, mankind, who are not accustomed to analysis, are convinced that the philosopher's doctrines are not sound, while all the time they are simply not common. All truth is mutually dependent; it is consistent, harmonious, relative. To suppress, or constructively distort one branch of it, is to cripple the stalwart march of the rest. SO long as it is inconsistent with popular theology, it must be impeded by assuming or implying that the latter has a solid foundation. If, therefore, it be desired that truth should progress, its disingenuous defender must at last Openly disavow what he constructively professed, and-the unpalatable nature of his principles must labour under the addi tional disadvantage of the insincerity of their professor.

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