cause, in the course of gaining experience, we encounter the risk of suffering the greatest calamities. In short, Poets and Novelists describe men as they do the weather; in their pages they make the storm to rage with terrific energy, or the sun to shine with the softest radiance, but do not enable us to discover whether, to-morrow, the elements will war, or the zephyrs play; and without this power, we cannot put to sea with the certainty of favoring gales, nor stay in port without the risk of losing winds that would have wafted us to the wished-for shore. Phrenology, therefore, if a true system of human nature, ought not only to furnish to the popular reader the key of philosophy, to unlock the stores of intellectual wealth contained in the volumes of our most gifted authors, but also to render their representations of human character practically useful, by enabling him to discover the natural qualities of living individuals prior to experience of their conduct, and thus to appreciate their tendencies before becoming the victim of their incapacity or passions.

The causes of the failure of the metaphysician are easily recognised. He studied the mind chiefly by reflecting on his own consciousness; he turned his attention inwards, observed the phenomena of his own faculties, and recorded these as metaphysical science. But the mind is not conscious of organs at all; we are not informed by feeling of the existence of muscles, of nerves of motion, nerves of taste, nerves of smell, of an auditory apparatus, of optic nerves, or of any mental organs whatever. All that consciousness reveals is, that the mind inhabits the head; but it does not inform us what material substances the head contains; and hence it was impossible for the metaphysician to discover the organs of the mind by his method of philosophising, and no metaphysical philosopher pretends to have discovered them. The imperfection of this mode of investigation accounts for the contradictory results obtained by different metaphysicians. Suppose an individual possessed of a brain like a New Hollander, to turn philosopher; he would never, by reflecting on his own consciousness, find an instinctive faculty for art; and, therefore, he would exclude it from his system. Another philosopher, constituted like Raphael, on the other hand, would feel it strongly, and give it a prominent place.

When we turn our attention to the works of Physiologists, we discover the most ceaseless, but fruitless, endeavors to ascertain and determine the parts of the body, with which the several mental powers are most closely connected. Some of them have dissected the brain, in the hope of discovering in its texture an indication of the functions which it performs in relation to the mind; but success has not hitherto crowned their efforts. When we examine, with the most scrupulous minuteness, the form, color, and texture of the brain, no sentiment can be perceived slumbering in its fibres, nor half-formed ideas starting from its folds. It appears to the eye only as a mass of curiously convoluted matter; and the understanding declares its incapacity to penetrate the purposes of its parts.

In short, we cannot, by merely dissecting any organ of the body, discover its functions. For example, anatomists, for many centuries, dissected the nerves of motion and feeling, and saw nothing in their structure that indicated the difference of their functions; and, at this moment, if the nerves of taste and of hearing were presented together on the table, we might look at them for ages without discovering any traces of their functions from their structure alone. Simple dissection of the brain, therefore, could not lead to the discovery of the functions of its different parts.

The obstacles which have hitherto opposed the attainment of this information have been many.

Imagination has been called in to afford information which philosophy withheld, and theories have been invented to supply the place of knowledge founded on fact and legitimate induction. "The greater number of physiologists, physicians and philosophers," says Dr. Spurzheim, "derive the moral sentiments from various viscera, or from the nervous plexus and ganglia of the great sympathetic nerve, that is, from the nerves of the abdomen and thorax; but comparative anatomy and physiology entirely contradict this opinion. There are animals endowed with faculties attributed to certain bowels or viscera, which do not possess these viscera. Insects, for instance, become angry, and have neither liver nor bile. Oxen horses, hogs, &c. have many viscera in structure analogous to those of man, and yet they want many faculties which are attributed to

these viscera, and with which man is endowed." The heart is supposed to be the seat of the tender affections; but the heart of the tiger and of the lamb are alike in structure, and the one ought to be the organ of cruelty, and the other of meekness, if this supposition were true. (New Phys. Syst. p. 133). Other physiologists have compared the size of the brain of man with that of the lower animals; contrasting at the same time their mental powers; and have been led to the conclusion that it is the organ of the mind, and that its superior developement in man indicates his mental superiority over the brutes; but these philosophers have not succeeded in determining the functions of the different parts of this organ, and have not been able, in any important degree, to connect their discoveries with the philosophy of mind. Camper, in order to measure the extent of the brain, and, as he imagined, the corresponding energy of the intellectual faculties, drew a vertical line, touching the upper lip and the most prominent part of the forehead and also a horizontal line, crossing the former, and touching the tips of the upper front teeth, and the external opening of the ear, or, at least, corresponding to these points in its direction; and he thought that man and animals have more understanding, the more the upper and inner angle formed by the two lines, or that including the upper jaw, nose, &c. is obtuse; and, on the contrary, that man and animals are more stupid, the more this facial angle is acute. But this manner of measuring the intellectual faculties is not more correct than those previously mentioned. The facial angle applies only to the anterior parts of the brain situated in the forehead, and is inapplicable to all the lateral and posterior parts; hence it could, even if there were no other objection, indicate only those faculties whose organs constitute the forehead. Besides, in many Negroes, the jaw-bones are extremely prominent, and the facial angle acute ; while their foreheads are in fact largely developed, and their intellectual faculties powerful, although, by Camper's rule, they ought to be inferior to many stupid Europeans, whose foreheads are deficient, but whose jaws recede. Hence, the facial angle cannot serve as a means of measuring the moral sentiments and intellectual faculties. (New Phys. Syst. p. 197, 198, 199.)

"Some physiologists, as Sommering and Cuvier, have compared the size of the brain in general with that of the face; and, according to them, animals are more stupid as the face is larger in proportion to the brain." But that this rule is not infallible, is easily proved, because Leo, Montaigne, Leibnitz, Haller, and Mirabeau, had large faces and very considerable brains. Bossuet, Voltaire, and Kant, had, on the contrary, small faces and also large brains. (New Phys. Syst. p. 200.)

The cerebral parts have likewise been compared with each other, in order to ascertain their functions, as, the brain with the cerebellum, the brain with the medulla oblongata, with the nerves, &c., but these modes also have led to no satisfactory results. The elder writers, such as Aristotle and his followers, who assigned different faculties to different parts of the brain, proceeded on fancy, or on notions of supposed suitableness of the place in the head to the nature of the power; and their views have been entirely abandoned both by physiologists and metaphysicians. In short, it is well known, that no theory of the functions of the brain is yet admitted and taught as certain science, such as the doctrine of the circulation of the blood, and the functions of the muscles, nerves, and bones.

Dr. Roget, an opponent of Phrenology, freely confesses that "the brain is still as incomprehensible in its functions, as it is subtle and complex in its anatomy." (Cranios Sup. to Enc. Brit.); and the writer in the 94th Number of the Edinburgh Review, says,

in

"Even within our own time, although many great anatomists had devoted themselves almost exclusively to describing the brain, this organ used to be demonstrated by the greater number of teachers, in a manner which, however invariable, was assuredly not particularly useful. It was so mechanically cut down upon, deed, as to constitute a sort of exhibition connected with nothing. The teacher and the pupil were equally dissatisfied with the performance, and the former probably the most; the latter soon gave up the painful attempt to draw any kind of deductions from what he witnessed, and disposed of the difficulty as he best could, when he had to render an account of what he had seen. Up to this day,

our memory is pained by the recollection of the barbarous names and regular sections of what was then the dullest part of anatomical study; which, although often repeated, left no trace but of its obscurity, or its absurdity. Here an oval space of a white color, and there a line of gray or curve of red, were displayed; here a cineritious, there a medullary mass; here a portion white without and gray within; there a portion white within and gray without; here a gland-pituitary; there a gland like grains of sand; here a ventricle; there a cul-de-sac; with endless fibres, and lines, and globules, and simple marks, with appellations no less fanciful than devoid of meaning."

"The anatomist dissected, and toiled on in this unpromising territory, and entangled himself more in proportion to his unwillingness to be defeated; and he succeeded, no doubt, in making out a clear display of all these complicated parts, which few, however, could remember, and fewer still could comprehend. Then came the physiologist in still greater perplexity, and drew his conclusions, and assigned offices to the multiplied portions and ramifications of nervous substance, by arbitrary conjecture for the most part, and often with manifest inconsistency. Although the brain was generally allowed to be the organ of the intellectual faculties, it was supposed to give out, from particular portions of the mass, but quite indifferently, nerves of sensation, general and specific, nerves of motion, and nerves of volition; the single, double, or multiplied origin of nerves, which had not escaped notice, not being supposed to be connected with these separate offices."

"Such, so vague, so obscure, so inexact, so unsatisfactory, was the kind of knowledge communicated to the student, until a very recent period; and the impression left by it was that of confused and unintelligible profusion in the distribution of nerves, of intricacy without meaning, of an expenditure of resources without a parellel in the other works of nature." Pages 447, 448.

Unless, then, Dr. Gall could boast of some other method of investigation than those of the ordinary physiologist and metaphysician, he could offer no legitimate pretensions to the solution of the question, What parts of the brain, and what mental, faculties, are