صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

6

ously abstain from lobsters and eels." "Yes, now I perceive it will be so, for your destructiveness is counteracted by a very large benevolence."-" You have causality very large." Farther and farther from the truth. I never ask a reason, and cannot endure an argument." "Stop; do not be hasty; let me see: I have it your comparison, which is a superficial sort of an organ, is so immense, that your causality cannot work."— "You have wit very large ?" "That is not at all in my way." "But when you speak do not they laugh ?" "They do, and much more than I like." "That is your wit which makes them, for wit consists not only in being so ourselves, but is the cause that it is in other men.'" Thus the conjurer may throw his balls at pleasure, without the trick being perceived. A sleight of hand, and a readiness of equivocation, are the perfection of his art. It is a device of materialism to assert that, as the mind must be somewhere, and is seated in the body, it must have extension. Now as extension is a property of matter, it would trick us into the conclusion that the mind is either matter, or that mind and matter were homogeneous. But all this is gratuitous. If I am asked, where is mind? I answer, "You would put words into my mouth. It is not any where. I believe that it is incapable of extension. It is related to my body and that is all I know. I am perfectly ignorant of the manner. I am contented with the fact. It is you who would affect acquaintance with the mode of operation. You would force upon mind an attribute which not only it was never known to possess, but in discrimination from which it was only ever known to exist. You leap from the admission of a connection or relation to the conclusion of a locality. There may be a thousand such relations, and yet no idea of place. These are the most different things. They can never be properly confused." Yet from the assumption, the mere begging of the question, that the mind must be somewhere, many are deluded and entrapped into every materialistic dilemma. It is not evasion, but a pure philosophic symbol, to say that there exists relation—no more, and nothing else.*

Ut supra, p. 443.

Another expedient is found of great utility in these lectures on heads. Such dispositions are attributed to the party under examination, as no one would renounce, or could disclaim. What are called in this system "fundamental powers," are of course acknowledged by all. The most excellent, being the most humble, will admit their faults and temptations, though they maintain the strictest self-government. The inspector cannot fail in his generalship or generalization.-The physiognomy, as the word is commonly employed, will lend most valuable aid. The idea of the disposition is obtained before the head is explored. But never is the inquisitor so accurate as when he is the bosom friend or familiar companion of him whom he tries. He seldom, in these cases, misapprehends! It is wonderful with what divination he hits off the character! If you will give the lines of Catullus a rather punning translation, they will most satisfactorily explain the intuitive knowledge which these connoisseurs are accustomed to boast.

"Risi nescio quem modo in corona

Qui, cum mirifice Vatiniana

Meus crimina CALVUS explicasset,

Admirans ait hæc, manusque tollens !"

It is asserted that as certain organs of the human body perform their separate functions, so it is equally evident that judgment and memory are the functions of an appropriate apparatus, the central organ of the nervous system. We will not quarrel with the position of such centralization. Let us simply deal with this hardy assertion. The glands are ordained for particular secretions. Now in their ducts all these secretions have been detected throughout their several stages. The mechanism of the heart is known, and its office in the circulation of the blood. We can explore the causes which modify that circulating fluid. The alimentary canal has been laid open, and the successive processes of digestion have been minutely traced. This is intelligible. But who can apply these statements to the mind? When were brought to light the different progressions of mental maturity? When was seen the half-formed thought, the embryo idea, in the duplicatures of the brain?

It is but, it seems, a Gland! Thought is generated from it as wax and lymph are from others! A Majendie might find it in operation! If thinking result from matter, it can only be in two ways. It must, in the first place, be an essential property of it. But this no one will maintain. Matter is found in all kinds and forms where there is no accompaniment nor effect of intelligence and reason. Or the alternative is, that thought may be produced in matter by refinements and combinations of certain parts. It is not denied that substances in compound often elicit that which seems wholly new. But a third can never spring from the two without being perfectly similar, or without changing the one or the other. compound may be disintegrated by the addition of another ingredient which, forming a new compound with the first, liberates the second. No union of parts can create a new and permanent property which is opposed to those parts when separate. By what analogies is it, then, contended that material changes can create a new element or quality which is neither a like nor a hybrid? Where is, indeed, the compound? Where are any two things to constitute it? Matter there is, but it is

alone!

A

The celebrity of some names, which have given their sanction to this new company of speculatists, has caused many to waver in pronouncing against it, though strongly, and, but for this circumstance, convincingly impressed. But there never was an invention, however weak, but it found advocates among learned men. How the great VERULAM himself defends and approves what a child would now detect to be fallacious. When MESMER, after repeated disappointment in Germany, taught and practised his Animal Magnetism in France, he was the idol of the multitude. Testimony was borne to his candour and acuteness by the learned. He declared that there must be a revolution in philosophy as well as medicine. Thousands gave experimental evidence in his favour by the most singular cures. Man was represented by him as having the poles of the magnet, and animal magnetism was described as a most subtle, circumambient, fluid, connecting the starry influences with our frame.

His theory is now universally scouted, but it had once as many able apologists as Craniology can boast. The Academicians who examined it, and reported on its falsity, agreed that the system was not useless to philosophy, "as it affords one fact more to be added to the history of the errors and illusions of the human mind." PERKINS, of America, discovered the powers of the Metallic Tractors; and, when he arrived in this country, such relief was given to innumerable cases of disease, that he must be incredulous indeed who rejects them all. Many of the witnesses were unimpeachable, the cases were generally incontestable, and the benevolent sold these rods cheaply, or gave them gratuitously, in their pity for human misery. Then GALL and SPURZHEIM come into vogue with their nostrum ; and will be remembered with the same affectionate veneration! Theirs will prove "a caput mortuum" too!

In some cases the misfortune would be to have only one bad disposition; its influence would be most active and mischievous. A solitary burglar or murderer generally proceeds to a greater excess than when surrounded with associates. The banditti are restrained by mutual jealousy. Happy is he who has not only the organ of slaughter, but of covetiveness! he will be the kindest of men in seeking to be rich! Happy is he who is cunning, if he have but pugnacity, which is always frank he will be the most honest and ingenuous soul alive! The neutralization is perfect! The balance of power is restored! -Thus the quantities of Craniological Algebra will repair every evil of superfluity or deficiency; this quality plus that; that quality minus this, until we should get into its most convenient equations.

I am prepared to expect, if this hypothesis be true, that some great end is to be answered by it. These are golden words of Warburton-"Truth is producive of utility, and utility is indicative of truth." If it be a work of nature, what does it intend? The organs struggle to the surface of the skull, and contend for pre-eminence. Is it not that they may be exhibited? Why, then, the thick integument and over-spreading hair of the pericranium? How can we learn the human tendencies? By

passing the hand over the head? Upon what pretence? Can we bring up the fashion of patting it? Many, with Ollapod, would resent the contact, and exclaim, "Touch my ears, you touch my honour !" Or are heads to be shaved, as is universal in Persia? In some cases of mental hallucination it has been found very serviceable here; when the theorising epidemic prevails it may be safely recommended! But the "Rape of the Lock" is always an adventure! The Catch-pole sometimes comes off the worst!

If the mass of the brain can thus affect the bulk and conformation of the skull, it must be possessed of powers which have hitherto eluded detection. In mechanics it is easy to produce a simple motion, and to multiply motions in the same direction; but it requires genius to give complex and contrary motions. But what an instrument must we have inside our heads, perpendicular, horizontal, rotatory, in its operations; raising, elongating, rounding, at the same time the same substance; gouging out prominences through the whole compass of the periphery; and losing no power, though thus extended, multiplied, and inverted. No Board of Works could do the business of the cerebral machine!

It is commonly urged in support of this theory, that it will have a favourable effect on education. This must be necessarily dependent on its truth. But grant that it is true,—and I have found that its advocates are very reluctant to express an opinion of the juvenile head. A professor of the art assured me that he never confided in a judgment formed of a person under twenty years of age. The structure of the infant's head may be so affected by circumstances, and the growth of the head is so peculiar, that I am not surprised that the craniologist is somewhat chary of his sentiments. Then how does it assist education? An affectionate parent will be too observant of the early dispositions, the unfolding faculties, of his child, to have occasion to grope for them on the skull. The lisp, the look, the manner, will plainly declare the invisible mind. One remark of Gall may serve to illustrate the utility of this science in education: speaking of certain organs he most com

« السابقةمتابعة »